A Breeders' Cup Preamble

I'll have 13 separate posts on each Breeders' Cup race coming over the course of the next few days, but first, I wanted to go on a brief rant:

Everything about the Breeders' Cup in its current format is kind of awful.

Just look at breederscup.com. There's a Longines banner at the top, and featured further down are folks like Elizabeth Banks, James Carville and Kristin Chenoweth.

Oh, and here's a fun quote regarding why they market the event this way.

According to Forbes, the typical Breeders' Cup attendee is a college graduate who earns a six-figure salary. That meshes with the event's horse owners, worth about $200 million apiece.

Oy.

Pretty much everyone involved in horse racing seems hellbent on focusing on the luxury of the sport, and if you're reading this, you've probably already heard me complain about that. I'll just say that catering to the 1 percent probably isn't a good idea for a sport in desperate need of new fans and, especially, young fans.

But what bothers me about this year in particular is that they've made Friday nearly irrelevant. Friday at the Breeders' Cup is not much different than a nice Saturday at any New York track the rest of the year. If you're an American racing fan and two-year-old males and females on the turf gets you excited, you're the first such fan I've met.

The Dirt Mile and the Distaff are solid races, no doubt, but the Breeders' Cup has turned Friday into something that feels optional for non-hardcore fans. Back in "the day" — say five years ago? — I believe they ran seven Breeders' Cup races on Friday and eight on Saturday (or something along those lines), and they sprinkled races of varying quality throughout both days so that both days were MUST-SEE TV. At this point, I would be in favor of what some true old school folks have advocated: Make it a one-day event again and be done with it. Friday just annoys me at this point.

Finally, there's the rotating site concept that's now focusing on tracks that I would call boutique in Keeneland next year and Del Mar the following year.

Now, don't get me wrong, Keeneland is fantastic and a temple of horse racing. I've never been to Del Mar, but as far as I know, it's very much the same.

But holding the Breeders' Cup at these places is like holding the Super Bowl at Lambeau Field. It sounds kind of cool, but in reality, you're artificially limiting the audience and subjecting those that do attend to likely misery.

Keeneland, again, is awesome, but the track itself can only hold so many people. The Breeders' Cup so badly wants to create this luxury atmosphere that they'll freeze out people who can't pay $1,000 for a ticket.

It's just ridiculous.

And yet ... I'm incredibly excited for the 2014 Breeders' Cup. Let's get started.