Watching the Eclipse Awards the other night on uStream, I was struck by how many folks went out of their way to mention not only the importance of fans, but the importance of NEW FANS. As the co-founder of a fan education site, I couldn’t agree more!
As we look to the future, we must also pass on our passion and excitement for this glorious sport to the next generation. It is our obligation. A candle loses nothing by lighting another.
As you already know Blind Luck will continue to race this year and I hope in some small way we’re able to bring some new people to the race track.
Those were just a few of the mentions of the importance and desire to bring new fans to the game… not to be too optimistic, but I think we can help.
In addition publishing posts for beginners, we also have a variety of intermediate level posts geared towards deepening the relationship of the casual and/or curious fans. For example, last year we did a Figs Gone Wild series and a variety of wagering strategy pieces (in addition to many other pieces, stop by!). But we also offer folks other ways to learn about racing, such as our excellent regular feature of Ten Things You Should Know About by Kevin Martin of Colin’s Ghost that profiles races or our Derby Prep Alert mailing that brings the Derby and Oaks prep season to casual and curious. This year’s starts on Friday so get your curious peeps to sign up!
We plan on building on our platform this year by adding horse profiles, track guides and focusing on posts that help new players create and/or refine their practice. As you can imagine, not only does all this take time, it takes money.
So, I’d like to cordially invite all of those industry entities that are interested in the creation of new fans to support our efforts!
We even offer you a variety of ways to do so:
1. Advertise in our Ad Network
We have an extensive network of excellent blogs, forums and independent media sites that could be displaying your ad above the fold. This helps to fund to the creation of new fans because we use our portion of the proceeds to fund the creation of content at HRF (yes, we pay our contributors!). Find out more about our network here.
2. Advertise your product on one of our sites
If potential, new and/or casual fans are not really your demographic, we also could also advertise your product on Raceday 360, a site we acquired this year from horse racing’s original blogger, Jessica Chapel (who’s also a HRF Contributor!). Any ad money derived from either of our sites goes to content creation on HRF. Well, and other business expenses such as hosting, etc.
3. Just give us cash
If you don’t really have anything to advertise but just want to help, you could always give us cash! Just sent it to paypal at hello race fans dot com.
4. Link to us
We love cash and it certainly keeps the site going but making it easy for folks to find the site helps too!
We’re working on a proper media kit targeted for Q2, but you could call us at 1-800-801-0931 or reach us here to get the ball rolling.
I’d also like to thank those in the industry who have supported us so far:
Advertisers:
Breeders’ Cup (charter advertiser)
West Point Thoroughbreds (charter advertiser)
Links:
A special shout out goes out to Breeders’ Cup for mentioning us on-air during the 2009 Friday telecast and Claire Novak & Joe Depaolo for having me on their radio show over the summer.
Plenty of individuals have supported us too, and we greatly appreciate it. There are far too many to list but all of contributors (including folks who participate in our Indexes) and publishers are among them.
If you’re looking for folks in the industry who actively support the creation of new fans and retention of budding fans, look no further than this list. A list you can easily add your organization too!