The organization founded by Thoroughbred owner Mike Repole to press for change in racing is holding discussions with racing constituencies to put in place mandatory funding mechanisms for aftercare efforts, the executive director of the organization, Pat Cummings, said during a panel at the Global Symposium on Racing on Wednesday. Cummings said that the discussions have been taking place with auction companies, racetracks, horsemen’s groups, and racing organizations. The plan would require sales companies, auction buyers and sellers, and commercial breeding operations to make mandatory contributions, as well as assess a per-start fee for every racehorse in the country. “It can’t be a choice,” Cummings said. “It just can’t be anymore. What we’re seeing now, by leaving it exclusively to choice, we have been left with an entire ecosystem that is perpetually underfunded.” Using rough estimates, Cummings said that the goal was to raise approximately $20 million a year, with half coming from the per-start assessments and the other half raised from the auction industry and the commercial breeding industry. Last year, total purse distribution at U.S. tracks was $1.31 billion, according to The Jockey Club. Purses at U.S. tracks are heavily subsidized by revenues from casinos in many jurisdictions. :: Subscribe to the DRF Post Time Email Newsletter: Get the news you need to play today's races!  Cummings spoke on a panel that included veterans of the aftercare market, including Stacie Clark Rogers, the operations consultant for the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance; Jen Roytz, a breeder and commercial re-trainer of retired Thoroughbreds; and Jessica Hammond, the executive director of Maryland’s Beyond the Wire rehoming program. All of the panelists agreed that aftercare efforts need far more funding to adequately provide for the sport’s retirees, but several also seemed to push back against Cumming’s plan for mandatory assessments. Hammond and Clark Rogers, for example, both said that funding for their organizations is already being provided by a vast cross section of the industry. Clark Rogers also said that industry participants can grow weary of constant check-offs during a horse’s career. “The touchpoint model doesn’t always work,” she said. Roytz, however, said she agreed that racing can no longer treat aftercare as “charitable endeavor.” “It really needs to be part of everyone’s business model,” Roytz said. “It can’t just be a $100 feel-good donation.” The panelists agreed that racing needs to “reshape” the opinion in the larger equestrian world about the suitability of Thoroughbreds in sporting roles outside the racetrack. Many participants in the equestrian community think of Thoroughbreds as being too high-strung for roles other than racing, or they are unwilling to put in the work to retrain a Thoroughbred, they said. Changing that perception would lead to more demand for Thoroughbreds once they are retired. “You have to change the mindset of the general equestrian public,” said Roytz, who says she often sells some of her retrained Thoroughbreds for as much as $30,000. “They want something that can be sound, durable, and a good partner for them. And a lot of times money is not an object. . . . I think we can do a lot to change that perception.” :: Bet with the Best! Get FREE All-Access PPs and Weekly Cashback when you wager on DRF Bets. Cummings said that his research into the aftercare market has led him to believe that the most sound retired horses are being targeted by commercial retraining operations that are turning profits. The downside to that, he said, is that the stock going to non-profit aftercare organizations are now becoming harder to retrain and rehome. Hammond said she recognized that trend, and she said that retirement organizations are feeling the pressure to quickly retrain horses and find new homes for them quickly, especially as the industry focuses more and more on putting horses into the pipeline. “The racing industry puts indirect pressure on these facilities to crank their horses through so they can accept more horses,” Hammond said. Takeout talk dominates discussion A Wednesday afternoon panel on maintaining and increasing racing’s market share in the gambling markets rapidly turned into a discussion on the impact of takeout on racing’s ability to retain and attract new customers and the impact of computerized wagering teams on so-called “retail players,” as discussions of this type at racing conferences so often do. The panelists included Marshall Gramm, a professor in the economics department of Rhodes College and an avid horseplayer who also breeds and races horses, and Matt Feig, the chief operating officer of NYRA Bets, one of the larger account-wagering operations in the U.S. Nearly everyone in the industry agrees that takeouts should be lowered to increase the chances for players to make money, but many tracks are currently operating on thin margins and under pressure from horsemen to increase purses, especially those that do not receive casino subsides. In addition, the sizeable play of CAWs in the industry’s pari-mutuel pools – and the rebates they receive – have made lowering takeouts financially risky, due to the prospect of those teams pulling out. The conversation did cover some new ground in a back-and-forth about attracting the hordes of new sports bettors that have been created by the widespread legalization of sports wagering in most U.S. states over the past five years. Feig pointed out that he didn’t feel as if racing’s takeout was a “barrier” to attracting those bettors, considering the takeouts on sports bets like parlays, in which the payouts are often set 40 to 50 percent below the actual odds of the bet winning. :: Get Daily Racing Form Past Performances – the exclusive home of Beyer Speed Figures “That sports book customer is not price sensitive,” Feig said. Gramm countered that sports bettors are typically very familiar with the games they are betting on, and to get them to try racing, racing needs “to give them a chance to win,” which would be more likely if takeouts, especially in the straight pools, were set at a much lower level.   Gramm also pressed a point that the gap between the effective takeout faced by the recreational player and the takeout rates offered to CAWs has grown far too large to be sustainable. “We’re not pricing the product properly for recreational players, and we are giving too big a break to the computer teams,” Gramm said. “I’m waiting for racetracks to realize that.” :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.