Luck Named Equestricon 'Racing Keynote' Speaker

Nick Luck, fresh off of helming the innovative and well-received NBC Sports Network live broadcasts from Royal Ascot, will be the 'Racing Keynote' speaker at the upcoming first inaugural Equestricon horse racing convention in Saratoga Springs. Luck will deliver his speech at 10:30 a.m. on the event's final day.

The convention, the first of its kind in the sport, will include more than 80 events, panels, attractions and exhibits and spans three days Aug. 13-15. Day one, Sunday, will feature a handful of behind-the-scenes experiences at and around Saratoga Race Course, while the next two days, considered the General Session of the event, will be hosted exclusively at the Saratoga Springs City Center. Topics range broadly, with a diverse array of speakers, headlined by Luck and journalist Soledad O'Brien, who will deliver the “Aftercare Keynote” Monday morning.

A mainstay on NBC's Breeders' Cup telecasts, Luck published his thoughts after last year's World Championships on Thoroughbred Racing Commentary in a post titled “Ten reasons why things are looking up for American racing.” His argument was that, despite a barrage of negative headlines about racing's future in this country, there was actually ample justification for optimism, including American horses' supremacy on world stages and positive developments in attendance and animal welfare.

Luck's post caught the eye of many in the racing industry, including Dan Tordjman, the co-founder of Equestricon who had done work with Luck for America's Best Racing leading up to the Breeders' Cup. He and Luck discussed the bases for laying out a more positive, inclusive vision for the industry, and their talks led to Tordjman and his fellow co-founders offering Luck the keynote at Equestricon.

“I was very honored to accept,” Luck told the TDN. “They're an incredible forward-looking, optimistic, capable group of people who I'm very keen to support. I think Dan and some of the other organizers saw that what I'd set out to write in my article, broadly speaking, tallied with their philosophy in starting Equestricon.”

Regarding that philosophy, Luck continued, “I sensed a groundswell of optimism within American horse racing that perhaps hadn't been obvious in the 10-12 years I had been coming here for races. We had become accustomed to reading a lot of navel-gazing negativity about how the sport was on the downgrade and going to hell in a handcart. I didn't necessarily feel that was the case and I think that touched a nerve with Dan and his team.”

The 39-year-old Luck is at an apex in his career that produced the groundbreaking opportunity to broadcast the prestigious Royal Ascot meeting to a nationwide American audience. NBCSN had Luck as its lead anchor at Ascot, accompanying the network's simulcast of British station ITV's well-staffed coverage of the meet. The week was difficult at times for Luck and the smaller NBCSN team as they tried to thread the needle between producing an American-geared telecast while still maintaining the uniquely British atmosphere of Ascot. But ratings and reviews from fans of the coverage have been overwhelmingly positive, making the endeavor an exceedingly rewarding one for Luck.

“It was as satisfying an experience as I've had professionally,” Luck said. “It was not without challenge, but I was really thrilled and staggered by the positive response from the U.S. Looking at it with Equestricon in mind, it was incredibly encouraging to have confirmed the suspicion that more and more racing fans, particularly the younger ones, look beyond the boundaries of their own nation when viewing horse racing as a sport.”

Horse racing, for a niche sport, is an intricate and complex one, with myriad interests rubbing elbows and butting heads in search of a common goal–growth. Luck notes that one of the things that drew him to Equestricon was its attempt to represent all of the game's stakeholders in finding a more balanced, natural approach to fan development.

“I think what they're doing really well is they've gone to town with an incredibly inclusive agenda,” Luck commented. “They're embracing all the things that they love about horse racing. They're not simply saying, 'well, horse racing is not a product for the modern era, so therefore we have to fundamentally sell it on some abstract linkup with popular culture.' What they're saying is 'we can use our own youth, enthusiasm and dynamism to sell what we believe in, in an entirely authentic way.' They're taking a bold, all-embracing view of the sport.”

Equestricon also looks to give a more proportionate voice to one of the often overlooked principals of horse racing: horseplayers. There are nine scheduled events that focus on some aspect of handicapping races, part of a push toward representing the people fueling racing's purses that Luck believes is essential.

“They're not shying away from the fact that wagering is integral to the future health of the game,” Luck said. “You can't pretend that the sport is going to exist and survive without people being enthusiastic, not just for the horses or the horsemen, but also for the prospect of winning a few dollars. That shouldn't be something that the sport shies away from or is ashamed of. In an increasingly competitive leisure market and wagering market, you want people to think that horse racing is a stimulating enough challenge that they'd rather spend their dollars working out which horse is going to win the next race than on anything else.”

Luck thinks that racing has a tendency to pigeonhole its patrons into two main categories, handicapper or fan, when the truth is that most consumers of the sport fall somewhere on a sliding scale in the middle.

“I sometimes feel that people perceive racing fans as either newbies who need to be attracted by hitching racing's wagon to whatever the latest popular culture fad is, or they're hardcore punters who sit in a darkened room all day looking at numbers,” Luck said. “You've got to understand that 95% of people are in between those two extremes. It's this presupposition that people who wager don't have a sense of humor and people who like a bit of fun don't like a bet. If this convention works in any sense, it's because it's all-embracing. You have to embrace the whole.”

Equestricon co-founder Kathryn Sharp concurred, saying in a statement, “The whole premise of Equestricon is that we all start on equal footing. Whether you're a fan, a bettor, an owner, breeder or a racetrack executive, you'll be walking into Equestricon as someone with a perspective to share. This is an open forum for the free-flow of ideas and information; a safe space to listen and learn about the sport of racing. To be able to bring someone like Nick Luck into the building, with his range of experience in covering the sport all over the globe, is an incredible honor. We look forward to his keynote address with great anticipation.”