Sept 3,2001 (Part II)

Unfortunately, the same failings mentioned earlier in this report are still the biggest failings today:

* "The undelivered promise that players would soon be able to watch live races on their computer monitors with video as smooth the picture on your television." The fact of the matter is that the technology in this area simply has not been forthcoming as fast as in other areas of computing. As more and more people get on the Information Superhighway, the lanes are getting more and more crowded, and more construction has to be done to build additional lanes. This, of course, is a simple way to talk about bandwidth, a term you may have encountered, which simply means in street level lingo, we need a much bigger pipe to let the water flow through faster. How much longer? My guess is a minimum of 5 years--about 2006.

I hope I'm proven wrong , but I have a feeling I'm still right  as I've called the shot pretty closely on this development so far.

* "The continuing of the same losing attitude by the majority of race track managements on the Internet as in the real world." With the exception of the tracks mentioned in the first part of this report (and, to be fair, the smaller ones that received favorable comment in the last two issues of Handicapping in Cyberspace), the majority of racetracks in North America still STINK when it comes to handicapping and the Internet. 

Is it that difficult to understand? Is is some type of brain illness? Maybe it's just generations of raging inbreeding. Whatever it is, racetrack managements still (1) don't understand that their product/attraction is a unique combination of RACING and GAMBLING which offers the best odds of winning of all games of chance and (2) that they MUST find successful ways to bring in new people to the sport.

It really IS that simple.

But the suits in control of these losing propositions continue to market their places even on the Internet as venues for fine dining and live music, and, oh, yeah, you can bet on the races, too.

The lack of cultivating and educating new players on the Internet, where the audience is decidedly younger and proven by studies to be largely looking for new diversions, thrills, and excitement, is pitiful at worst and insulting at best to the regular players who have provided the revenue for years to pay the decision-makers who keep the status a very sickly quo! 

On a more positive note, some conclusions since last February:

Overall, players do have much to be thankful for on the Internet. Perhaps because we are becoming accustomed to instant gratification in so many areas of our lives, we tend to take the accessibility to information, much of it free, that we have today, more for granted than even just a few years ago.

A large number of racing-oriented websites outside North America, mostly thrown-together affairs that were really vehicles just to have a website only a few years ago, have become engaging Cyberspace addresses. In many cases, it is obvious that the people behind them not only know what players want, but are players themselves.They're aware that serving handicappers well insures the continuity of the sport as well as enabling them to earn a living doing what they love.

Summing up: the state of Handicapping and the Internet is somewhat better than it was at the end of February, 2000--not a huge amount to cheer about but nothing to wail and bitch about more than usual, either.

The negatives are still there, and we can pretty sure that one of them (the technical part) will improve. The positives have seen some notable steps forward, which certainly will lead to more diverse information for handicappers.

How quickly?

I wish I knew...I still don't quite have the complete hang of this Internet Time thing myself!