The Belmont Stakes
A conversation with Chris Kay
How is the longest-running leg of the Triple Crown embracing lessons from marquee entertainment events to help transform a venerable horse race into an iconic American sporting event?
First run in 1867, the Belmont Stakes is now one of the oldest and richest thoroughbred races in the world. When the Triple Crown is up for grabs, there are tens of thousands of excited spectators at the track and millions more watching off-track. But more often than not, the Belmont Stakes had been seen as simply just another lucrative stakes race for top American breeders. When Chris Kay became the CEO and President of the New York Racing Association, he set for himself the ambition to extend, elevate and innovate this venerable horse race, and to find a new generation of fans that would guarantee its future for another century and a half.
In this “Legacy in the Making” interview, Chris sits down with The Legacy Lab to discuss the challenge of writing a new chapter in one of the oldest sporting legacies in America—one that will honor its loyal fans and uphold its rich traditions, but one that will also find new, fun ways to enhance “the greatest day of horse racing in America.”
By Mark Miller in conversation with Chris Kay
Can you tell us about the origins of the Belmont Stakes, including its role in the New York Racing Association’s stable of brands, and about the iconic race itself?
The Belmont Stakes is the third and final leg of the Triple Crown in horse racing. It happens five weeks after the Kentucky Derby and three weeks after the Preakness Stakes. This year, we had the 147th running where the world witnessed history as American Pharoah became only the 12th horse ever, and the first one in 37 years, to win the Triple Crown.
Today, the Belmont Stakes is run by the New York Racing Association (NYRA). The NYRA was created in 1955 as a not-for-profit organization. That said, we are a not-for-profit that has been at the cornerstone of the horse racing industry in New York for a long while, contributing heavily to an industry that generates an economic impact of more than $2 billion annually and adds over 17,000 related jobs to the state of New York.
Before the NYRA existed, there were four different entities that owned individual local racetracks, which they later contributed to form the basis of our racing association. Under the NYRA, the four tracks became three: the majestic Belmont Park where Triple Crown champions are made; the Saratoga Race Course, one of the oldest sporting facilities in America, which has been described by Sports Illustrated as one of the top 10 sporting venues in the world; and the Aqueduct Racetrack, New York City’s racetrack in the borough of Queens near JFK airport.
Up until recently, the Belmont Stakes was really a one-race event, where the audience size was directly related to whether there was a Triple Crown on the line. If you go back even just a couple of years, when there was a Triple Crown up for grabs, there might have been over 100,000 people here on race day and a very large audience watching at home on TV. But if there wasn’t a Triple Crown, the crowd would be anywhere from 45,000 to 50,000 in person, and the broadcast audience would also be cut in half.
Over the past two years, my team and I have been working to transform the Belmont Stakes into an event far bigger than just one race.
What’s been the Belmont Stakes’ biggest success, and what did you learn from it?
We’ve been working toward learning and applying from other successful sports. We are creating must-see big event days providing the best racing, entertainment and hospitality all in a single event.
Our new approach started with the 2014 Belmont Stakes Day. We took some of our better races previously run on other days, including the Metropolitan Handicap, and added them to the card featuring the Belmont Stakes. With 10 major stakes races featuring $8 million in purses, all of our racing packages and trackside seating areas were sold out before the running of last year’s Preakness—before anyone knew if there would even be a Triple Crown possibility. We built on this success in 2015 and transformed Belmont Stakes Day into the three-day Belmont Stakes Racing Festival. We featured the world’s finest thoroughbreds and jockeys competing in 31 races, including 17 stakes races, all for more than $10 million in total purse money.
To be a must-see event, the racing alone wasn’t enough. We included additional entertainment. The analogy I used for NBC, the network broadcasting the Belmont, was that I wanted to have a halftime show feel that you might experience around a major football event, albeit with a distinct New York vibe. This year, our race day entertainment included the veteran band from the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York accompanied by paratroopers with GoPros® jumping out of helicopters; the stars of The Jersey Boys, one of Broadway’s most successful plays; and a GRAMMY®-nominated band that also hails from New York, the Goo Goo Dolls.
We also started to integrate high-definition (HD) technology into the entertainment experience. We installed 378 HD televisions and three HD video boards, as well as provided several HD point-of-view cameras for fans to customize the way they watch horse workouts, horses in the paddock and the races. At the finish line, we installed an HD slow-motion camera.
In terms of onsite hospitality, we made a combined $5 million investment in improving the train station at Belmont Park. We brought in more than 30 food trucks featuring local flavors. And we limited attendance numbers to enhance the experience for everyone.
By creating must-see big event days, we have improved the quality of horse racing for all horse racing fans and horseplayers across the country.
Can you tell us about the audience you are now appealing to?
We’re aiming to appeal to the 18−35 year old crowd. Some may argue that horse racing has been popular for decades. But we really have lost a generation going back 10, 15, 20 years. And when we lost that generation, we lost the ability for that generation to bring their kids to the track. They were going to other sporting venues. Football has grown in popularity. Horse racing has declined. So, with our approach, we’re trying to say this is not your grandfather’s horse racing.
This is fun. You can party, you can place a bet and you can watch a race. And if you win, you can cash your ticket and party some more. There is immediate gratification here. This is better than any fantasy league. You pick the horse. You know who the jockey is. Then boom, it’s real. You don’t have to wait until the end of the day to find out whether your baseball players were 0-for-4 or 4-for-4. It’s all there, right in front of you. It’s very exciting.
We’re not asking this new audience to come every day. But on those must-see days where you have exceptional entertainment and some rare food and beverage options, it’s a great opportunity for the young crowd to sample the modern experience.
In transforming the Belmont Stakes into a must-see event, what are some of the hard lessons you have learned along the way?
In 2014, what did not work well was that we had a massive in-person crowd of roughly 115,000 people. And we didn’t have the infrastructure to help make that experience a must-repeat one. The logistics of getting in and out were not good at all. Unfortunately, what was a great day of racing was marred by how long it took to leave the facility. It was something that I was concerned about and wanted to address as a newcomer. However, I had been told, ‘We’ve been doing this for a long time. This is your first one. Don’t worry about it.’ The result, as I anticipated, was not good.
The Monday after the Belmont that year, I got on the phone with the president of the Long Island Railroad, who had just started a month earlier. We agreed that we had to do something to fix this. Over the following 50 weeks, we worked on a plan. The train station at Belmont Park was built in 1968 and was in incredible need of renovation and upgrading. The Long Island Railroad put $4 million into it, and we put $1 million into it. And by 2015, we had a new station that worked much better than the one in 2014.
In addition, the building at Belmont had also been built in 1968 and had limited space and restrooms. So we had to ask ourselves, ‘What could we do to better satisfy our guests’ expectations?’ Rather than have 115,000 people, I capped the audience this year at 90,000. In response, some people said I was an idiot and that I was closing out the sport. But the vast majority of people said, ‘Well, I think that shows real courage.’ All the criticism that occurred in 2014 was negated, and we were praised in 2015. Between capping the event at 90,000 guests and making capital improvements on and around the facility, it made a world of difference.
You’ve talked a little about some of the changes that you’ve added. Given the rich history of the Belmont Stakes, what traditions, if any, did you seek to protect?
We have a trophy room where we display the Belmont and Triple Crown trophies. In 2014 and again in 2015, we reached out to the three jockeys who rode to glory at Belmont for Triple Crowns in 1973, 1977 and 1978. All three jockeys were there in 2014 to sign autographs when California Chrome attempted—though did not ultimately win—the Triple Crown. We extended the same offer in 2015 when American Pharoah attempted—and succeeded—at doing the same thing. All the jockeys tried to make it, but one of them had suffered an injury. So we had two of the three on hand for the significant event. In 2014, along those same lines, we reached out to the widows of the owners of those past Triple Crown winners: Secretariat [1973], Seattle Slew [1977] and Affirmed [1978]. We had all three of the women there, and they presented one of the trophies on Belmont Stakes Day, as did those jockeys, as part of our event.
In transforming the Belmont Stakes into a modern event for the next generation of fans, in bringing it forward, we’ve definitely made a real effort to show an appreciation and respect for our past by celebrating its history.
Earlier you mentioned the relevance of New York as a backdrop, as part of the context for the event. Can you elaborate? Would you consider the Belmont Stakes an important New York tradition?
I think New York has some of the most devout horse racing fans in the country. The key is growing more of them because some of them are in their 60s now. When you go to the Kentucky Derby, they sing ‘My Old Kentucky Home.’ People from Kentucky sway back and forth, and everybody else mouths the words. When you are at the Belmont, when we play ‘New York, New York’ by Frank Sinatra, everybody’s belting it out—including the people from Kentucky who come to visit for the event.
Beyond tapping into the passion that already exists, my ambition is to turn the Belmont Stakes into even more of a New York tradition: making our event the unofficial start to summer in the same way that the US Open tennis tournament is the unofficial end of summer.
To achieve that ambition, two conditions have to be true. First, in New York, everything has to be of the highest quality. When you look at the US Open, it’s first and foremost about the quality of the tennis. You can’t have mediocre quality and then pay a few celebrities to show up to help make it something it isn’t. So, our event focus, like theirs, has to be on the quality of the racing. Second, there needs to be recognition that everybody in this city likes to feel like a celebrity. Everybody tweets and has their phone going all of the time. So, we need to make sure that everyone feels special when they come out for the day. We’re going to entertain you; we’re going to feed you well; we’re going to give you lots of different things to pique your interest in fashion, in music and, of course, in horse racing. I would say that we are well on our way to making our event as much a part of the summer tradition in New York as the US Open.
For such a pedigreed event, you added a rather remarkable chapter to the Belmont Stakes storybook this year. From your perspective, what was it like to have been there on the day when American Pharoah won the Triple Crown?
Unforgettable. The wall of sound that engulfed us on the presentation platform, from about eight seconds before American Pharoah won up until about 10 minutes after, was incredible. It was so loud and joyous. I turned and looked at all these people—the fans, everybody on their feet with their arms in the air, everyone jumping up and down. It felt like it went on for a really long time.
For those less familiar with racing, the way that ownership is defined is by ‘silks’—the blouse or shirt worn by the jockey. Each owner has a distinct color and/or emblem on their jockey’s clothing. On race day, we had 11 different placards on display that featured the 11 previous Triple Crown winners, the horse’s name and year, and a caricature of the silks worn by the jockey on the day they won. Within three minutes of American Pharoah crossing the finish line, we erected a new placard for his win to great applause. After a long drought, we had our 12th Triple Crown winner. History had been made.
And rather than winning jockey Victor Espinoza immediately taking his horse to the winner’s circle for pictures, he went all the way down to the end of the grandstand so that everyone could see American Pharoah prance by, creating even more cheers for the horse and the jockey. It was the equivalent of a baseball player coming out of the dugout for a ‘curtain call’ in response to the continuing ovation from the crowd for a remarkable play. The outrider, capturing the moment live, had a GoPro camera on him. The outrider was the first person to talk to Victor after he won the Triple Crown. And Victor, in a very genuine, live moment, said, ‘Holy shit!’
You referenced the integration of modern technology, including GoPro technology, into the on-air coverage of the event. Are there other integrations of new technology that you are currently employing or considering to change the way we watch horse racing?
That’s definitely the kind of thing we’ll explore doing more of to help make it fun for people viewing on television. The balance we need to find is to integrate modern technology to enhance viewing, but not while putting any of the horses or jockeys at risk, and not while interfering with the race itself, including how the horses run.
With new toys and technology, the temptation is to think that the closer views would always be more compelling to view from above or on the sidelines. To give you a sense of things, a typical jockey, when the race starts, has five or six different goggles on. And so, when one fills with mud, he puts it up on his helmet. And when the second one fills with mud, he puts it up on his helmet. And at the end of the race, he may be on his fifth or sixth pair just because of all the dirt that’s kicked up by the horses in front. So, we have to work through the technology that is trendy versus the technology that actually makes the viewing experience better.
I can tell you that one technology recently considered was the use of drones. We tried a drone to give us better shots of the crowd. But we have not yet utilized a drone to give us shots of the race itself. For now, what we’ve done instead, unlike any other racetrack in the country, is position several point-of-view cameras around the track. In turn, you can customize the way you watch a race on our website. So if you’re in California, you can watch it from different angles, not just the one angle that we create for normal viewing. And you can look at horses in the paddock too.
How would you like to see the Belmont Stakes continue to evolve? What do you see as its legacy in the making?
This is a place where champions are crowned. Yes, in 2015, after a 37-year drought, we crowned a Triple Crown champion. But every year, we’re going to crown a Belmont Stakes champion, and we need to do more to enhance that. So, we’re right now building a legacy as the best day of horse racing in America, whether we have a Triple Crown or not.
In the 1980s, the horse racing industry created the Breeder’s Cup, a two-day event—Friday and Saturday affair—where theoretically the best horses from around the world compete. In 2014, we created our own Breeder’s Cup at Belmont Park. Some call our event the Spring Breeder’s Cup.
Others call it Breeder’s Cup East Coast Style. In 2014, I was at the Breeder’s Cup where they maybe had 35,000 people on the first day and 45,000 to 50,000 on the second day. There was nowhere near the excitement that we had in our building. This year, we had the same high level of excitement, except ours was sustained over a three-day event. We had a large purse. And of course, American Pharoah won. The folks in Lexington are going to put on a great couple of days this year. It’ll be great because a lot of breeders are in Lexington. But for sheer excitement and drama, wherever you were watching, you were likely to conclude that the Belmont was more compelling than the Breeder’s Cup.
It’s a high ambition, but we are again building a legacy that signals the Belmont as the best day of racing in America.
What advice would you give to another leader trying to create change to a brand with a famous history?
The most important thing is to be open to every idea. What I’ve tried to do since I’ve been here is to look at other sports and how they’ve succeeded for inspiration. And then I’ve had to ask, okay, what else works? Because my brand is also a form of entertainment, what works in the world of entertainment? Because my brand is also a gaming brand, what works in the world of casino gaming? I’ve had to find those things that work elsewhere and apply them to my sport, my brand that heretofore has not been receptive to too much change. And as we have been catching up with the times, I’m now beginning to have a wider purview too. I’m beginning to ask, ‘What can we do that no other sport, entertainment or gaming brand is doing?’
At 147 years old, while still respecting the traditions of its storied past, the Belmont Stakes is also continuously working toward elevating its experience: taking influences from the worlds of sports, entertainment and gaming; integrating aspects of high tech into the older universe of the racetrack; and applying modern aspects of hospitality—all designed to contribute to the best day of racing in America. What once was just a single, albeit significant, horse race is transforming into a bigger cultural event that is part of the rich fabric of the City of New York. For a young generation that previously found it easy to give horse racing a skip, The Belmont Stakes is creating a new breed of must-see racing events that will be hard to ignore for generations to come.