I'm a novice horseplayer for the past couple years after a chance trip to the track on a date...and thoroughly enjoying it.   The education they plan to do to help educate the potential betting public caught my public relations/marketing communications professional eye.  If you want to sell, be prepared to educate first, most times. 
We went to a seminar the Downs held this summer and caught the fever.  $10 each for a seminar and nice meal on a Friday evening, with a hot date, and a chance to bet on the races with a bunch of expert horse players all around you....it didn't get any better than that....at that moment in time.  Now we've got a chance to win the same amounts as others by getting into the pools directly.  I may have to get the cable or satellite horse racing channel back earlier than the start of our next spring- summer season here, next year.  Horse racing may be the next poker...oh well, not likely but it should be.

The Winnipeg Free Press - other

Downs hopes new rules attract fresh bettors Wed Oct 26 2005 By Paul Wiecek



MANAGEMENT at Assiniboia Downs yesterday unveiled an ambitious new project to turn some Manitobans into millionaires.
And they plan to do it with New Yorkers' money.
Downs operations director Darren Dunn told a news conference at the Portage Avenue thoroughbred track that a change in the way Canadians bet on horse racing in the U.S. has the potential to generate huge -- possibly unprecedented -- payoffs for Manitoba horseplayers. And Dunn said management at the non-profit track is determined to teach its customers how to go get all that new money with a series of betting seminars with top local horse players, an online seminar that is coming soon to the Downs website and an aggressive recruitment drive aimed at teaching new horse players how to get in on the action.
"We're on a mission," Dunn said. "We're going to make Manitobans the highest rated, best handicappers in the world."

And the mission starts immediately, with Saturday's Breeders' Cup -- the world championships of horse racing -- providing the first big opportunity for Manitobans to cash in on a rule change that, beginning today, will allow bettors here to wager directly into the pools at New York tracks, including Belmont Park, host of this year's Breeders Cup.