Revamped Breeders' Cup Challenge Series Looks to Grow Racing

By Michael Illiano 
    The Breeders' Cup 2014 Challenge Series could not ask for a better launching pad than the undercard of this Saturday's GI Belmont S. With millions of casual and potential fans tuning in to watch California Chrome's Triple Crown bid, the Breeders' Cup will have a direct line to its target audience. 
“As soon as NBC comes on the air, the first race they are going to show is the [GI Metropolitan H.], which will introduce and explain the challenge series,” Peter Rotondo, the Breeders' Cup Vice President of Media and Entertainment, said. “So I think we'll get a nice buzz to kick the series off.” 
    This year, the Challenge series will be presented as the result of a partnership between the Breeders' Cup and NBC. The series will feature 18 “Win and You're In” qualifying races for the GI Breeders' Cup Classic over 11 telecasts. While the races leading up to the Breeders' Cup Classic have been televised in the past, the programming was purchased and promoted solely by the Breeders' Cup. By partnering with NBC, the Breeders' Cup will benefit from a wider and more robust marketing campaign. 
    “In the past we've put races on TV, but we haven't really spent behind them to promote and drive them,” Breeders' Cup Vice President of Marketing, Justin McDonald said. “We're rolling a new [multi-platform] campaign that will look to go after channels and publications where we think we have a strong crossover in audiences.” 
Rotondo added that he thinks the series will be successful because it is offering a more compelling slate of races. 
“Last time we had a series of races on TV, it was more quantity than quality,” Rotondo said. “[This will be] the best racing schedule that has ever been put on television.” 
NBC Analyst Randy Moss will contribute a weekly ranking of the horses contending for a spot in the Nov. 2 GI Breeders' Cup Classic. 
    “Randy, I think, is really the key here,” Rotondo said. “The idea is that he'll have rankings each week to try and tell the story of these Classic horses all year long.” 
In order to reach beyond NBC's audience, the campaign has also made media buys to sponsor content in Sports Illustrated and People.com that will profile owners and “celebrity ambassadors” and their relationship with racing. 
“The idea is to get people into the story, so it's not just a straight advertisement,” McDonald said. “So you might see a sponsored story in Sports Illustrated about Joe Torre and why he loves racing. And that story will be wrapped around the Breeders' Cup Challenge.” 
    The challenge will also feature a “micro-site” that will be activated with race-specific content the day of major telecasts. 
    “Our site will be full of content from video, to stuff about fashion–'What should I wear to these races?'–and we'll have content for the newbies as well,” Rotondo said. 
One of the focuses of the peripheral content will be to introduce new fans to handicapping and betting. 
    “People are going to be interested in how they can make some money on this,” Rotondo said. “So we're going to have the Horseplayers from the Esquire Network giving handicapping tips, and feature horseplayers from the National Handicapping Championship (NHC) Tour who have made lots of money betting the races.” 
The partnership will also promote a Million Dollar Finish game alongside the Challenge Series that will offer viewers a low-risk entry into wagering. Fans will have the opportunity to win $15,000 for 11 of the Challenge races by predicting the top 10 finishers in the correct order. Even if fans do not predict the exact order, they can earn points for partially correct cards–for instance, correctly predicting the first-place finisher of a race will be worth 100 points, with descending point values down to 10th place. The person with the most cumulative points at the end of the 11 challenge races will win a VIP trip to the Breeders' Cup Championships. Fans will also be given the opportunity to predict the exact order of the Classic, where a winning card will be worth $1 million. 
    “It's kind of like a bracketology contest,” McDonald said. “It's easy to sign up and easy to play. It just gives people a chance to engage further with the broadcast and gives them added incentive to watch the race.” 
NBC broadcasts, and the content that will be featured alongside them, will include instructions and links to direct interested fans to sites where they can open a betting account. 
    “Obviously, we're in the gambling business,” Rotondo said. “In the past, people have been skittish about promoting gambling directly–even though we're showing the odds and payouts–but this year we are going to have a direct call to action to open an account.” 
The hope is that the sum of these efforts will lead to a larger, year-round audience for televised racing. 
    “We're not just putting races on TV, we've really tried to build a multi-channel platform,” McDonald said. “We hope this will give the challenge its best opportunity to grow and attract fans into the sport.”