Triple Crown series needs marketing umbrella

One of my favorite racetrack giveaways is umbrella day.

Many a day have I stayed dry under the nurturing logo of Thistledown or Arlington Park as I tote their branded portable canopies with me through rain and light winds. It must be a law for all racetrack umbrellas to feature a horse head as the handle.

If I could pay racing back for keeping me dry, I would return the favor by giving the Triple Crown an umbrella of its own. This umbrella won’t keep the series dry, however. On the contrary, I want this umbrella to make it rain gold doubloons upon the industry.

The umbrella is some reincarnation of Triple Crown Productions, which for years did three things: gathered nominations for the Triple Crown races, negotiated a television contract for the series, and marketed the event to both sponsors and fans.

All that remains of Triple Crown Productions is a shared effort between the three host tracks—Churchill Downs, Pimlico Race Course, and Belmont Park—to gather nominations.

Forget changing the Triple Crown races themselves. As Jennie Rees said in a recent column, the distance of the races and the spacing between them is fine, as are the field size limitations and the mechanisms in place for determining who gets to enter.

What is not fine is the fragmented television coverage and paltry purses relative to the importance of the events to the American racing industry as a whole. Bringing back an organization such as Triple Crown Productions would help solve those issues, which would please CNBC's sports business analyst Darren Rovell.

While not quite the Holy Trinity, the Triple Crown is similar in that the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. Sure, the Kentucky Derby can stand by itself no matter what, and the Preakness Stakes always will be a big party where the Triple Crown dream is still alive. As for the Belmont Stakes … well, the Belmont Stakes hopes the Derby winner also takes the Preakness.

Ratings for the Belmont were better when it was on the same network as the first two races in the series, and the Triple Crown always seemed to have that added allure and buzz with a $5-million bonus attached. Also attached to that bonus was a sponsor, and the presence of a big-name company like Chrysler or Visa added cache to the series and to the sport.

An organization such as Triple Crown Productions would help unite the races on one network, secure a sponsor, and bring back the bonus. The idea needs to be that the Triple Crown series is a linear narrative and not three separate segments.

To that end, more horses need to compete in all three races. Sure, field sizes of 20, 12, and 12 (average 14.7) are great, but handle was down on the last two events, and part of that probably was because some people got off the wagon race to race.

To wit, a girl who works in my building who doesn't necessarily pay a lot of attention to horse racing, had asked about my picks for the Derby and Preakness. I e-mailed her my Belmont picks and she told me she had lost interest by now.

Currently, the Triple Crown races are worth $4-million in purses—$2-million for the Derby and $1-million each for the other two. Yes, they are worth much more in terms of prestige and breeding careers. To me, however, the three Triple Crown races need to have a higher purse value than the four Breeders’ Cup races for two-year-olds.

So, make it a $10-million series with $5-million in purses and $5-million in bonuses. Make the Derby $2.5-million and the other two $1.25-million. Sweeping the series would then be worth $3-million in purses. Add $2-million in bonus money and take home $5-million.

I’m not a big fan of “points based” scoring systems. In racing, the tiers of success are winning, placing, earning a purse, and finishing, so I would reward those levels on some scale that distributes the bonus to as many horses as possible who either compete in all three races or at least place in two of them (as First Dude did).

Lastly, the Triple Crown needs a better presence on the web. Each of the race's own websites have their strengths and are generally strong all around, but the Triple Crown website is weak. Racing fans need a resource for all things Triple Crown related: preps, TV coverage, nominees, PPs, history, etc.

A Churchill Downs official said that Triple Crown Productions is dormant but not dissolved. I hope the three tracks resurrect it, and that its return is as successful as the Holy Trinity’s was with hundreds of thousands attending services on Saturday afternoon and passing the collection plate through sell/cash windows.