Whether you agree with the theme or not, it is truly marketing genius!

Well played indeed. Applause all around. Make that cheddar, MD Jockey Club!!

By any means necessary to keep the Prek. Any means.

Wasn't Pegasus a winged horse? I think they have mixed that up with Pan the centaur, the god of debauchery. Oh wait, never mind.

The only problem I have with this is that the Maryland Jockey Club is trying to work around the fact that they royally screwed up.

They got tired of all of the drinking and general debauchery on the infield at their signature event, so they decided to ban BYO beer. The next year, when nobody showed up, they realized that the main people keeping them in business were those they wished gone. So they have decided to stand in this ridiculous middle ground where you can drink all you want inside for a fee, and between the "Get Your Preak On!" slogan and now a stupid mascot they are marketing the debauchery again.

They really need to decide what they are and go with it.

Just as an aside, isn't "debauchery" just a fantastic word?

I thought Pegasus was the mythological creature who flew too close ro the sun and was pretty much fried. But what do I know?

Also, let's be careful with the word "debauchery". If Jen Royle sees it, Peter will be as poor as the rest of us!

Fang,

I think that was Icarus.

Wasn't that one of the paintings in "Dinner for Schmucks?"

Right Schmuck, the Preakness is all about booze, not the best three year-olds in the US racing. Let's make sure to promote the Preakness as a boozing extravaganza, who needs racing anyway when you can provide feeds for a month of news "gone wild" shorts on local TV.

What horse racing in Maryland needs to possibly survive, emphasis on possibly, are bettors, not boozers. One day of an infield full of drunken sots may make for a national shaking of the head when shown on cable news, but it doesn't put money thru the parimutuels. Once again MJC management not surprisingly misses the thread.

You're kidding, right? This is the icon for the sport of kings! Maybe the King of Dundalk.

The redneck centaur artist needs to lay off the bad weed.
A Ravenette as Peggysus maybe, but beermare creatures might scare the kids.
Let Rocky and Bullwinkle handle the Natty Bohs.
A bohdacious babe in a snug T-shirt
might be a better poster girl for the infield party.

Bill H, Boozers and bettors are one in the same. I'm not sure if you only sit in the grandstands for stakes races, but have you ever seen the people that frequent Pimlico on a non big race day? Its old degenerants who piss away all their SSI money on OTB and hawaiian shirts. The one day of the year that this changes in Preakness. I am a 27 year old race fan who does go to the track on off days but no longer goes to Preakness. The reason is many fold. From 16 to 25 I was Pimlicos best of both worlds. I would binge drink to the point of death, but also lay down a 100 on bets. My in and out of town friends would do about the same but they would adhear to a certain level of decency that wouldnt ruin it for everyone else. Unfortunately many who come from out of town once a year dont know how to walk that fine line. Port a pot races and mud wrestling acceptable. Throwing full beer cans and gropping girls unacceptable. I think the later is what really set the Jockey Club off. Not to mention Pedro playing chicken down the stretch in 2005 on a nationally televised race. What we need is a happy medium of young and old preakness traditions and the past two years are getting closer to right. My option: 1)Make the infield a 30 dollar(50 all you can drink beer) flat rate and make it more of a keg party with betting then a race to see who can make the most trips to the beer garden. 2) Get rid of the expensive top 40 pop bands. Anyone that goes to Preakness and cares about Bruno Mars and Train deserves to get kicked in the head by one of the participants. Use this money to add more big screens, more betting windows, and more places to get beer. Its hard for the attendee to get excited when the jumbotron is in the corner of the track with a glare. If you have the beer next to the betting next to the screen, it becomes the kind of one stop shopping Americans yearn for. 3) Set up cones in front of the Jersey Turnpike. If it wasnt for the influx of drunk meatheads from the tristate my comment would have been much shorter.

m:
Having been raised on a horse farm, run a Maryland horse farm, held a trainer's license from Charlestown to Bowie for decades, I guess I don't know as much about racing as the drunks.

What killed Maryland racing was the twenty dollar grandstand price, the five dollar program, ten bucks to park your car and thence to have the dubious honor of losing money standing on a cold concrete floor in long lines at a few betting windows. The day the nearest cushy casino opened with free drinks, and no exorbitant fees; the Maryland racing 'kill the bettors with a hundred small cuts' paradigm died. And putting a bunch of drunks in the infield for one day won't cure it.

Never a thought was given to putting better quality fields for the bettor to play, keeping the facilities better than abandoned warehouses, and cutting the ridiculous front end "get in the door" costs. The track owners and the State thought of only themselves, not the bettors, not the horsemen and now they reap their rewards. Somewhere, Chick Lang, the Cohens and John Shapiro are turning over in their graves.

..............................................................................................
Pete's reply: Bill, you may know more about horseracing than anybody, but you're out of touch with reality. What racetrack charges $10 for parking and $20 for a grandstand seat, except for a Triple Crown race or the Breeders Cup. There are a myriad of reasons why racing has failed, some of which you've outlined, but the Preakness party is one of the things keeping it breathing. As long as I've been here -- 21 years -- the Maryland Jockey Club has turned a profit entirely because of the Preakness. Without it, those tracks would have shut down long ago. Part of it is generational, so the MJC tries to lure young people to the track with a party. I don't see why that bothers you.

All your points are valid, I just needed a forum to mock hawaiian shirts and New Jersey and the bettors not boozers punchline was a good jump off point.

Sorry Schmuck but with all due respect, it is you that is out of touch with the industry. Do read my post again brother Schmuck. I described the demise of racing in the past tense ("What killed Maryland racing WAS" - "was" is past tense - just ask your editor), as it was when the competing casinos first opened and racing started down the infamous slippery slope in a fatal dance between State and the track owners that approached the myopic stupidity of the current NFL labor situation. That was back in the past when the Sun actually had racing writers like Boniface and Peddicord, well before you took the red eye east.

While an infield booze party may indeed contribute to the MJC bottom line, it does absolutely nothing for the industry itself. Keeping the Preakness day profitable whilst the entire racing meet is a cash flow nightmare; certainly indicates a failure to acknowledge the realities of a morbid industry.

Quality facilities for the bettors, better purses attracting better fields, which attract better handles coupled with promoting, both the industry and the Preakness as the Derby is promoted, not as a keg party; is the correct approach.

Having folks of any age in the infield having a good time and enjoying some fine racing doesn't bother me in the least, but promoting a great race as a keg party - I find ludicrous.

What they need for the Preakness is a good band to get the infield party (and the bikini contest) on MTV and VH1.