Executives’ harsh comments don’t help sagging industry

If you were the commissioner of horse racing and heard these two quotes from high-ranking racing executives, what would you do?

“The average age of our on-track customer is deceased, and the average age of our satellite customer is decomposed.”

“There aren’t sufficient numbers of racing customers anymore because they died.”

The first quote is from David Israel, a commissioner on the California Horse Racing Board, who said this at the University of Arizona Racing Symposium in December. The second quote is from Peter Carlino, chairman of Penn National Gaming, stated during a company conference call with investors.

If you respect horse racing as much as I do, you’d be tempted to give them the Donald Trump treatment of “You’re fired!” If horse racing’s leadership voluntarily is trashing the sport, it’s no wonder public officials are unwilling to lend a helping hand to the industry.

One thing for sure, these two men didn’t sugarcoat a thing. If this is their view of tough love, then they used a sledgehammer — not a chisel — to make their point.

What bothers me more is the comment by Carlino. He and his company were in a creative position to do something positive for the sport. Penn National lobbied for, and succeeded in, getting slot machines placed in Charles Town and Penn National and then buying Zia Park.

This provided a huge subsidy to greatly increase purses for horseman while improving the company’s bottom line. What Penn didn’t do was lower the takeout, thus offering a subsidy to its clients, the horseplayers.

This would have done two things: reward loyal bettors for playing their races and increase the fan base by providing a gambling product that could better compete with casino games, poker, sports betting and the like.

Penn missed a chance to grow the sport instead of just lining its pockets with more cash. Thus, I consider Carlino’s comments a strong example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

■ HORSEPLAYER WORLD SERIES — The rich Horseplayer World Series handicapping tournament will be Thursday through Feb. 19 at The Orleans. The entry fee is stiff — $1,000. But the rewards are great, too, with a first prize in the neighborhood of $300,000 or more.

■ FERDINAND PROFILE — HRTV will profile the ill-fated life of 1986 Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand on “Inside Information” at 6 p.m. Sunday. Ferdinand died in a Japan slaughterhouse in 2002. His death fired up the racing industry to do much more to protect retired racehorses.

Richard Eng’s horse racing column is published Friday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He can be reached at rich_eng@hotmail.com.