Monday Morning Message with Jason Beem July 27, 2026

Jason discusses the weekend of racing including some promotions geared towards younger fans at various tracks. 

A good Monday morning to you all! Hope everyone had a good week. We finally had a mostly normal week weather wise here at Colonial and that came just in time as we lead up to Festival Day this weekend. Very excited for what looks to be a very strong card drawn for Saturday. Will certainly talk more about that later in the week. 

Many of us who love horse racing spend a good deal of time discussing the things we need to do better to make the game grow. Everyone has opinions on things that need to be changed or improved, from betting to field size to rules to enforcement of rules. Certainly most weekends we’re seeing a lot of people debate how we get better rulings on inquiries! However one of the things that I always like to see and I always think we underdo is making the racetrack a great spot for families and kids. 

I’ll be the first to say that we are in the gambling business. Our first priority always should be our customers who are betting and what can we do to service them better and with the best product possible. But I also think that it’s important to start growing exposure to the game to the next generation of fans as well. In over ten years of interviewing people for my podcast, the most common answer when I ask people how they got into the game was “my parents (or some family member) took me to the races when I was a kid. 

NYRA had a kids day on Sunday with young kids some stuff on the broadcast and I’m sure participating in lots of activities around the track. Here in Virginia we had members of the local Autism Society out and the kids were doing stuff all over the track. They even stopped by and visited with me in the announcer’s booth for a few minutes and had so many good questions. 

Horse racing is so big when you’re a kid. The horses are jaw-dropping and the excitement of a race is unmatched. I remember being a kid going to Longacres with my dad and going straight home on my bike to replay all the races as I rode around our neighborhood. I think about my favorite hobbies and pastimes that I enjoy as a middle-aged adult now and so many of them like baseball and horse racing trace back to me being a kid and loving them. 

The other thing for me was that even as a kid I loved the gambling and gamblers. My dad used to hang out with so many characters at Longacres and Yakima Meadows and to me they were the coolest guys around. Obviously with the convenience of betting from home or our phones, the number of characters at the track isn’t what it used to be. But to me, that was always a selling point of the races. You were going to get to be around people who unlike anyone you’d ever met. 

Our game has so much we need to work on within it, but if we ignore engaging and bringing in new generations of fans, we’re just speeding up the demise. I follow many 20-somethings on Twitter who are so passionate about the game and I want it to be around for them when they’re my age to enjoy it. Hopefully in a better place than it is now. And hopefully some of the kids who were out at the track this weekend will be the excited 20-somethings at that point. 

Have a great week everyone!