Yesterday, The New York Times ran a guest essay by renowned journalist Noah Shachtman. The title: “Dead Athletes. Empty Stands. Why Are We Paying Billions to Keep This Sport Alive?” I couldn’t have come up with a better one myself. As for the piece, it is one of the best treatments on racing yet – and without question the best ever allowed by The Times (see Joe Drape). Please know that HW contributed mightily, both with our data/information and through multiple conversations with the writer.

Obviously, we want you to support the entire work, so I’ll share just a few highlights:

“As misguided as [NY subsidies] sounds, it is a surprisingly common arrangement. Maryland uses as much as $91 million a year in slot machine revenue to prop up its horse racing industry. The state last year agreed to acquire the decrepit Pimlico track and invest up to an additional $400 million to upgrade it. Pennsylvania has sunk over $3.5 billion over the past two decades into its racehorse development fund. Even Kentucky, the storied home of American horse racing, relies on a similar machine. Without them, ‘we would have a few days of racing at Churchill Downs,’ Elisabeth Jensen, a former executive at the Kentucky Equine Education Project Foundation, said, ‘and that would be about it.’”

“Another key distinction [between racing and real sports]: Those other sports don’t routinely kill their athletes. The antiracing advocacy organization Horseracing Wrongs has shown that 11,000 horses have been put to death at American racetracks since 2014.”

“So why do it? Why keep propping up a pastime that, despite many attempted overhauls, can’t keep its fans and takes such a heavy toll on its athletes and workers? Our state and local governments struggle to pay teachers what they’re worth, to build affordable housing, to put enough firefighters on a rig.”

“The obvious solution here is also the simplest: Just stop. Let the sport stand on its own and dwindle to whatever size its fan base supports. Instead, state legislatures keep funneling money to it. ‘The biggest fear that our industry has is that the states are going to stop subsidizing, using slot machines to subsidize the sport,’ said Jeff Gural, who owns three harness racing tracks. ‘Without that, there is no sport.’”

“The difference between the torrent of money coming from casinos and the relatively paltry trickle coming from horse racing bets has warped the sport’s priorities to such a degree that racing can resemble at its worst moments a shell industry – a desiccated husk of a pastime, with Potemkin tracks running races as a pretext for the real business next door.”

And finally:

“Any of those rationales might’ve held up, back when horse racing was a thriving industry that could stand on its own…. But now, it relies on billions of dollars worth of our good will to get by. The owners and trainers run races on tracks we own. They pay their workers – well, let’s hope they’re paying their workers – with our money. Every dollar they get to skip in taxes is one that, at least in theory, has to be made up elsewhere. The sport belongs to us. It’s time to think about whether we actually want it.”

Thank you, Mr. Shachtman.

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