From Broadcast to Ecosystem: How Racing Wins Attention in the Modern Entertainment Economy
WoTA invited leaders from streaming technology, digital media transformation, and global sports commercialization to explore what modern audiences are looking for.
In her introduction, Ylva Svensson (WoTA / ATG) made reference to the ongoing football World Cup taking the attention of all. Horseracing is no longer competing only with other betting products, it is competing with every form of modern entertainment. Streaming platforms, social media, gaming, live sports, and digital communities all fight for the same limited resource: Attention.
So how can racing evolve to meet new audience expectations?
The moderator, Thorsten Castle, presenter at Wettstar, introduced Daniel Alinder, CEO at Vindral. He listed the different trends observed in watching sport and becoming central in audience retention:
- Social – people watch together for common memories and experiences
- Movement and new viewing format – viewers choose the angle to watch – Multi-angle is much appreciated, example in SailGP with 28 onboard angles
Thorsten said that the HKJC is gaining a lot of fans with multi-angle viewing.
- Data-Augmented – All sports have data/comments directly on the image
- Sticky Communities – Drops, rewards
For Horseracing, Vindral is working with ATG, Wettstar and Tasracing: In-Race viewing and data is under preparation.
His last example was on Twitch, gaming platform where viewers are making real-time interaction and predictions.
The second speaker, Martin Wiklund, Founder & CEO at Sportswik showed how sports organizations can move from passive broadcasting to platform-led audience ecosystems. Drawing from sports tech innovation, mobile-first engagement, and scalable community models, he demonstrated how the App from Swedish Football Federation have registered 10% of the total Swedish population with at least 20% of this share as contributors with free content, streaming, comments.
The last speaker, Adam Binns, founder and Consultant at AB Apex Advisory, previously at Racing TV and Racecourse Media Group, covered all the possibilities for horseracing to rebuild the journey to enjoy racing to gain new fans.The need is not to show more racing but to make racing easier to understand: Creators of content should be the new translator layer to make fans participate with increased experience, challenges, “behind the scenes” stories and exciting predictions. Creators will be from different backgrounds depending on which community they will address. Personalization remains key.