Via TD Thornton
Right now within Top 12 charts of TDN for the GI Kentucky Derby, seven horses are owned by a multi-entity partnership. One corporation has up to 10 individual owners, another eight.
If horses from those larger partnerships (or others – there are many of them and their numbers are growing worldwide) get into the Derby field, they won’t have to worry. worry about getting the satisfaction and distinction of seeing their name in print as the owner. But it’s just out of courtesy, Churchill Downs went a step further and hired a graphic designer to redesign the traditional show page for America’s most important and historic horse race to be owner-free. any of a jockey in the Derby was abandoned.
Technically, that conflicts with Kentucky regulations that limit the number of individual owners that can appear on a printed program page to five. At a meeting last week of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission (KHRC) rules committee, the commission’s staff and industry stakeholders attempted the first pass in updating that rule. so that every member of the association (or at least many of them) can be recognized as a listed owner in all Kentucky races, not just on Derby day.
Charlie O’Connor, KHRC commissioner, said: “I was approached by a number of ownership groups and we made room for more names. “As union groups in this country are becoming such a big deal, [people] people who invest their money in the horse business want to see their name on a show.
“These ownership groups and corporations are spending huge sums of money in Keeneland and Fasig-Tipton as well as all the home sales companies around the world, and I think their request to put their name on the program is a big deal. fair thing, and I think we’ll be able to accommodate it without any big, big problems,” O’Connor said.
Others in the discussion thought the same way. But it turns out that there are limitations to the practicality and potential undesirable consequences that would arise if the KHRC paved the way for more individuals to join the ownership lines.
As for the current rule itself, KHRC’s director of public administration, Barbara Borden, explained it this way: “Currently, our regulation stipulates that more than five individuals will not be licensed to work. owner of a horse. That’s why we have limited the number in the program to five. It goes on to say that if more than five individuals own the interest, they will appoint one as a licensed agent.”
Signer | Chelsea Durand
However, even in that year’s parameter, the line of ownership in a program in Kentucky still gets crowded. Several stakeholders at the meeting mentioned an issue regarding the 200 character limit as a requirement of the Equibase system. The number for that field was chosen some time ago, before the proliferation of partnerships over the past decade or so, and it was reasonable to assume that any ownership entity would match that amount of space.
But that equates to just 40 characters per association member if five owners are listed, and even then, to make things right, the characters are often concatenated without so spaced that, as Borden put it, the line is “unreadable” to anyone trying to decipher the program.
“Part of the problem is due to two things,” Borden said. “First, the owner wants to see their name, they probably know their name is on the show. But you can’t read it, and neither can anyone else. And another thing is, the reason we put ownership of the show in the first place, is for public disclosure. So if it’s not easy to read because we have too many names or the fonts are too small or whatever, then we’re completely off the mark for listing the owners.”
Frank Jones, Jr., a KHRC commissioner who chairs the rules committee, wondered if it would be feasible to include a “sub-document” in the program that would fit all names, while himself program pages are printed less. messy way.
Anna Seitz, who works with Fasig-Tipton and with international corporations, says that in Australia, “they list all the names. They just make the font smaller. I know it makes a huge difference. Those owners, that’s part of the reason they bought in, because they wanted their name on it.”
Gary Palmisano, Jr., racing executive of Churchill Downs, Inc., said his company is “all for” the corporations. “But just understand that it is limited in space” and that the problem is “a bigger picture problem” and not just learning how to deal with the limits of 200 characters.
“We live this every year with the Derby,” Palmisano said. “Obviously, during the Derby, every joint venture owner wants to see their name. Equibase is currently not able to include more than 200 characters. So we had to physically remove the owner parts, manually [line, and then string together] text, and try to include it [with everyone listed].”
But if the rules were changed to list more owners, Palmisano warned, “the racetracks every day will have to have a graphic designer, as we do for the Derby, [to] recreate the program flow. [That task] definitely something our team took a lot of time to do for the Derby show.
Palmisano continued: “Right now [the rule] say year [owners are the maximum listed]. With the track, assuming Equibase can help us with the language, we can figure out the programming part. We’ve been actively engaged with Equibase to try to figure out the part of the program. But I think [rules] the committee, rather than looking at the program part, should look closely to see if it is five, eight, seven, ten [owners listed]. Because that helps us shape what we need to do with Equibase.”
O’Connor said 10 names could be the attraction, because he sees many partnerships now built at 10% buy-in aiming to have 10 association members.
Borden says that leads to another disclosure-related issue.
“This takes us back two years to a time when we had forms of partnership that we no longer required,” Borden said. “Every association will have to report to us all participants in the association.”
While partnerships can raise the unsavory prospect of more paperwork for everyone involved, Borden says those types of forms have a downside in regards to better transparency.
“We don’t always know the exact ownership of each horse at the moment, so that could be a bonus for us,” Borden said. “But it would require us to be informed of all ownership and [percentages each entity owns].”
But, Borden said, no matter how much expansion the final rule night claims, common sense must inevitably intervene.
Gulf port | Coady Photography
“In my opinion, at some point, there has to be a limit,” says Borden. “It’s not endless. If 100 people own a horse, we cannot put 100 names on it.”
Keeneland’s vice president of racing, Gatewood Bell, raised another potential red flag regarding having multiple owners listed: Even though Kentucky recently relaxed its rules for with mutual entries trying to increase the field size, but a single owner still cannot run two horses in the same race if it excludes the other owner’s horse from participating. So what if an individual is a small percentage owner in one organization and owns another horse entirely or as part of a second partnership? How will preferences be fairly determined?
“You wouldn’t want to discourage owners from joining these associations and having their own horses too,” says Bell.
Borden points out that any overlapping ownership in a race, even a small percentage, still counts as an owner with an interest in the two horses.
Ultimately, the committee did not propose or vote on any rule changes. Jones, the committee’s chair, said the whole matter needed further study, but it would likely be brought up again in the near future.
“The more you listen, the more you see how complicated this problem can become,” admits Jones.
