While its main objective seems to be promoting the Pennsylvania Derby (fair enough), the image (right) is one of youngish people cheering on harness racing – with part of a thoroughbred flying above their heads. I fully appreciate that PA Racing is trying to cater to both their thoroughbred and standardbred constituencies, but if the target audience is people in their 20s who have never been to the track and don’t have a clear idea of what the Pennsylvania Derby is already, this isn’t going to help them very much.

Their choice of advertising venue doesn’t make much sense either, if the goal is to get a younger, presumably hipper, demographic, why choose philly.com? Beyond it hosting one of the worst newspapers I’ve ever had the misfortune to read, I would never go there to find something to do of a weekend – there are plenty of great local blogs (Foobooz, Philebrity, etc.) that do a much better job of that.

Beyond that, the Track Pack website itself is a nice start, but it’s rather let down by the product. They suggest an evening out at the track for a ‘fine meal’ and ‘drinks’ but I would challenge anyone to find anything remotely resembling that at Philly Park – while I don’t expect Jose Garces to come set up shop at the track (although that would be unequivocally awesome), there isn’t even decent ballpark quality food. Citizens Bank Park has done a pretty good job of offering a range of food and drink options (indeed, the one really useful thing on philly.com is the list of what beer is available in each section of the stadium – and there are plenty of great local choices, with Victory, Yards, Yuengling, Flying Fish, Sly Fox, Troegs and Philadelphia Brewing Company widely available). Of course, you can barely see the racing at this point at Philly Park, but that’s another story – and probably a secondary concern for this particular marketing effort.

One other quibble on the website front is the section with links to Twitter, Facebook et al. – rather than allowing you to follow them or become a fan, all it does is let you send the URL around – it’s a one-time shot that’s losing the chance to collect user information and maintain a regular chain of communication. You can follow them on Twitter with a little more work – you need to click to ‘join the TrackPack’ rather than use the buttons on the front page – so it’s not winning any points from a user interface perspective. However, it’s early days yet, so presumably they are still working out some of those issues.

Another minor point is that if the hipster crowd is, indeed, the goal, the models could have been dressed a little more Northern Liberties, rather than South Philly (although I was getting a bit of a Jersey vibe as well); I may not be a fan of the annoying porkpie hat myself, but I suspect their wearers may be more susceptible to the allure of a Rat Pack-esque night out.

That leaves the other problem – there’s no good way to get to Philly Park from the city (or most of the suburbs) without driving – and if I’m going to drive to the track anyway, I tend to go to Delaware Park. True, the food is still terrible (there is one halfway decent beer stand, which is better than nothing), but the atmosphere is so much better – it’s a racetrack that happens to have a slots parlor attached, but I never need to see the casino portion of it. Philly Park doesn’t give the impression that racing is still terribly important – and judging by their own website, they don’t care if you can’t get there via public transit (which is handy, because it’s not a viable option).

So while the Track Pack is a useful notion, it would be much better served (at least locally) by a real effort to make the track itself more appealing – partner with a good beer distributor, get in a real catering company and make getting to the track less difficult. Marketing to new fans is certainly welcome, but if their first visit doesn’t impress them, it’s a wasted effort. For existing fans, the above would be very much appreciated – as would a better space to actually watch the racing, which, surely, is the whole point of the operation in the first place.

1) Local Certified Drug-free Races
In a pilot project, one track would modify their condition book to create races restricted to horses running entirely on hay, oats and water (or hay, oats, water and Guinness, if you prefer). Best practices for drug testing and initial incentives for owners and breeders would be developed at this time. Such incentives could be structured like something akin to a state-bred bonus system – beyond the official series of drug-free races, purses in other races could be augmented for ‘certified drug-free’ (or ’100% organic’ if you require a catchy marketing name) horses.

2) Expansion of Incentives
After working out any initial kinks on the local level, the drug-free series could be rolled out to other tracks and with a larger pool of participants, incentives for breeders would also be built into the system. In addition to the cachet of having a stallion or mare who could be marketed as a success on the track without drugs, reduced stud fees could be offered to participating mares – with a higher rate for mares who did not take part in the program.

3) International Options
As the program continues to expand, closer links with other racing jurisdictions could be forged by creating win-and-you’re-in races for major races in Europe, the UAE, Japan – perhaps even Australia and New Zealand – places where drug-free racing is already the norm. High profile international horses could also be lured over for the drug-free race offerings, so that the US racing public could get a chance to see some of those stars outside the Breeders’ Cup.

4) Full Co-operation
The long-term goal is that the Breeders’ Cup and Triple Crown series would adopt the drug-free system, with the further intent that daily racing throughout the the US would follow the same guidelines. Given the lack of centralized control in American races, a piecemeal approach seems to be the only way to get such a system in place.

There is plenty of scope for revision and modification within this proposal and it is expected that there would be problems at the beginning as well as Brass Hat-style drug positives from previous therapeutic treatments (and drug withdrawal times for such treatments would need to be standardized to avoid such issues wherever possible), but it’s clear that the current system of vague, inconsistent penalties for illegal drugs doesn’t deter their use – the notion getting rid of currently-legal drugs like Lasix doesn’t have a chance in that climate. But it can be done – enough administrators, trainers, breeders and owners need to decide they want to make it happen.

Who wants to take the first step?