TikTok, the app that enables video content material creators to succeed in hundreds of thousands all throughout the grasp of a smartphone, has given horse racing entry to a completely new viewers.
Not solely is the platform serving to to teach the lots concerning the intricate particulars of breeding, racing, and gross sales, however savvy advertising and marketing and social media managers are utilizing it to complement their messaging on different social media platforms as properly.
Hayley Amoss, supervisor of communications and social media for Breeders’ Cup, mentioned the function that TikTok and different social media play in selling the game. The group’s social media channels can be in full drive Nov. 5-6 because the Breeders’ Cup World Championships take middle stage at Del Mar.
“I am in a singular place the place I will help construct model publicity and expose the horse racing trade usually to the youthful era. Social media is the way in which to construct these followers. It is a enjoyable undertaking that I like taking up,” Amoss mentioned.
Hayley Amoss
For Amoss, tailoring posts to an viewers and understanding your viewership is the important thing to success. Audiences on TikTok want movies which haven’t been produced professionally, and gravitate towards instructional content material.
The Breeders’ Cup TikTok account launched earlier this 12 months and has taken viewers behind the scenes with clips of key contenders within the months main as much as their marquee occasion.
“We launched TikTok with give attention to the bottom protection as our major factor, promotional content material that includes 2017 Del Mar movies (Breeders’ Cup was held at Del Mar for the primary time in 2017), issues like that, after which throwing in an academic angle,” Amoss mentioned.
“You have received 30 seconds on TikTok to share your model and seize the eye of your viewers. How, in that 30 seconds, are you able to make one thing entertaining and academic sufficient in order that when somebody goes to a racetrack, they’re assured that they will place a win-place-show guess?”
TikTok helps followers join with behind-the-scenes points of the game
Amoss has a system she follows when creating concepts and capturing video.
“We often get there two days earlier than a race,” she mentioned. “We exit to the bottom and canopy and seize as many behind-the-scenes movies as we will of horses which might be contenders of the Breeders’ Cup Problem. Whether or not they’re coaching on the observe, within the stall, we attempt to get as a lot content material, each video and pictures, as doable.
“Following these races is often once we sit down and see what we captured. We see how we will apply it to sure traits particularly when it pertains to TikTok. We have now are available in with concepts of what we would like however horses are animals and typically you possibly can’t get precisely what you are hoping for, so we have realized that it is higher to have the movies and traits work with what we now have quite than anticipating and hoping for one thing specifically that won’t come to fruition.”
One other social media pioneer is Spendthrift Farm. Whereas the main Kentucky operation has over 27,000 followers on Instagram, their TikTok account that launched in early 2020 has greater than 97,800 followers—a quantity that continues to develop. Autry Graham, the assistant advertising and marketing director at Spendthrift, runs the social media accounts, heads up tourism alternatives, acts as employees photographer, runs the net retailer, and in addition manages tasks for the advertising and marketing division.
“Our social media following grew rapidly,” she mentioned. “(2020 Horse of the Yr) Authentic definitely didn’t hurt that, and we had a bunch of fans from Beholder . We started growing our social media platform and using it as kind of a tool to promote our progeny from our stallions, and it just went from there.
“TikTok is the Wild West,” Graham added. “There are no rules. It’s so new… It’s just the general public, there’s no other way to put it. You’ve got anybody from 12 years old to 80 years old on there. The way the algorithm works is just crazy… It’s great because you can interact with comments, and we get all kinds of things. People will say ‘I don’t know how this video showed up in my feed, but this is really cool.’ That’s awesome, we just possibly gained a new fan for the sport.
“We take an educational approach on there… because you’re talking to an audience that’s completely uneducated.”
Autry Graham
When Graham prepares to shoot video for TikTok she makes a plan for the entire month, then tries to shoot all of the content on the same day in about four hours. She also discussed the various platforms that Spendthrift utilizes and how each one differs.
“We assign different roles to each platform. The racing industry is on Twitter… it’s very factual. We honestly use that as a marketing tool. We see Facebook and Instagram as more of a space for fans. On our Facebook we make it a bit more lengthy, tag articles that BloodHorse writes and service more of the fans,” Graham said.
“On Instagram we’ve taken the perspective of trying to reach as many people as possible through beautiful imagery, and fun captions, interactive,” she added. “Like for the sale we did a ‘If you’re at Fasig-Tipton this week leave a star emoji’ (comment) just to try to engage our fans and let them know what we’re doing. We moved into the world of TikTok and our whole perspective is honestly you can’t reach everybody if you’re not everywhere.”
Since its inception, the Spendthrift TikTok account has received bids for employment as well as an influx of fans scheduling tours to come out and visit the farm.
“We’ve gotten emails from people looking for jobs, ‘Hi, saw your farm on TikTok. I work on this ranch in Idaho and I want to move to Kentucky. I’m really interested in racing. Do you have any availability?’ We’ve gotten tons of tour guests off of it. They didn’t even know it was a thing… So far we’ve seen it trickle into people spending money in the sport or trying to work at our farm.”
Engaging with fans is a vital part of Spendthrift Farm’s mission
Another person in the industry looking to expand racing’s influence in mainstream society is the senior manager of digital media for America’s Best Racing, Penelope Miller.
Miller oversees ABR’s digital properties, website, socials, and online presence. She has been a longstanding supporter and advocate of making the industry accessible to a wider audience.
“Back in 2011 and 2012 when ABR officially launched, it was mostly Facebook and Twitter. But of course, it’s branched out to everything from Instagram to Snapchat, YouTube, and now TikTok. We really just wanted to make sure people could understand that there was something at the racetrack that could appeal to them,” Miller said. “Whether it’s the betting, the horses, the lifestyle, the sport, the history, there really is something for everyone when it comes to racing and we wanted to show that and do that through our social media and back it up with digital content to put on our website.”
Similar to others, Miller changes content dependent upon the platform.
“For us Twitter is very much a betting-forward part of our content. We have a lot of people interested in handicapping or sports betting on Twitter … We also have really gone into love of the horse, history, and lifestyle on Facebook because that has an older audience and tends to have a little more interest in the feature type of stuff,” Miller said. “On Instagram we go for a lot of beauty and history. It does extraordinarily well on that platform as well. People have an interest in ‘Throwback Thursday’ and ‘Way Back Wednesday.’ We do a lot of lifestyle content as well as showing winners of races. People do love seeing the horses.
“YouTube is where we do a lot of videos, but we’ve also done livestreaming which has been very successful … Now we’re on TikTok and I’ve deliberately made the decision to make it very horse-centric. There is a large ‘Horse-Tok’ audience out there and with the shorter format of videos on there, people like to see more organic content. We do share some video features and really well produced content but a lot of it is just stuff I’ve shot on my cellphone, showing the love and lifestyle of Thoroughbred racehorses.”
Miller feels that social media is an essential part of modern day marketing; now that includes TikTok.
“I would go so far as to call it crucial. TikTok does tend to be content that people gather on their phones. It’s not polished, although it may be slightly edited within the app. It is really heartfelt. I think that having those experiences shared by people who do this day to day is more powerful than most advertising campaigns can be,” Miller said. “There is something about the authenticity of hearing it straight from people who are actively involved in the industry that I don’t think can be replicated.”
Penelope Miller
Another part of Miller’s passion regarding racing is making an effort to diversify the sport. She does this by bringing underrepresented groups onto ABR’s platform.
“We have tried to take a very active role in encouraging people from all sorts of backgrounds to get involved in horse racing. We do so through a lot of influencer campaigns, working with people of color, women. It’s really important for us to help people of all different backgrounds realize that there’s something in this sport that can appeal to them and to welcome them to our horse racing community because I genuinely believe this is the most fun you can have,” Miller said.
The Kentucky Horse Park’s marketing director, Kerry Howe, recently started utilizing TikTok to advance awareness of the park and help feature some of the horses and various operations that are located there.
After posting their first video in July of 2021, the park’s TikTok account now has a following of 13,600 and has received over 100,000 views on one video, with only eight videos posted in total so far.
“For us it’s a two-sided thing. It helps not only keep people wanting to come to the Horse Park, but a lot of people also find out about us and see what we have to offer and the horses we have here … We have two Kentucky Derby (G1) winners, Go for Gin and Funny Cide ,” Howe said.
Go for Gin at the Kentucky Horse Park
Many visitors come to the park with a very limited knowledge and end up learning something which draws them back time and time again. Social media helps them to keep in touch with that connection.
“There’s so many people that have come here and met these horses and even if they weren’t followers of the Thoroughbreds during their racing careers, they learn about them and get to know about what they did. They go back and watch the race replays and see how amazing they really were,” Howe said. “They enjoy these back stories and then they just create a relationship with the horse. With social media it allows us to continue that relationship. We’ll have people who come out here year to year just to see a specific horse. It wasn’t because they watched them during their racing glory days but because they fell in love with the horse and the story once they got here to the Horse Park.”
