What can equestrians learn from F1 and how can equestrian brands better leverage social media marketing?
Listen to our latest hacking session, featuring Pegasus cofounders Jen Tankel and Sam Baynes and Pegasus CMO Noah Levy.
🐴 This episode is brought to you by Pegasus, the first modern event management system that makes it easy to host and run equestrian events. Sign up for early access at www.thepegasus.app.
Be sure to follow Pegasus on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and subscribe to The Oxer, the #1 weekly newsletter for global equestrian industry happenings. 🗞️
What can equestrians learn from F1 and how can equestrian brands better leverage social media marketing?
Listen to our latest hacking session, featuring Pegasus cofounders Jen Tankel and Sam Baynes and Pegasus CMO Noah Levy.
🐴 This episode is brought to you by Pegasus, the first modern event management system that makes it easy to host and run equestrian events. Sign up for early access at www.thepegasus.app.
Be sure to follow Pegasus on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and subscribe to The Oxer, the #1 weekly newsletter for global equestrian industry happenings. 🗞️
So I actually think that you could call this a crisis event. You have all these great companies in the equestrian space, but they're not marketing themselves, which just means, oh my God, we could have a gold rush. But it's also a crisis in the sense that, like, why are we not doing it? If you don't do it now, then you're not going to get the customers.
Speaker 2:So my story, simon's story it's more of a topic for collaborative discussion stem from the fact that we are actively trying to grow our social media accounts. So I'm always thinking about ways to educate and entertain and provide value, but also be able to be something that's really fun to scroll through and learn from and follow along right. So while doing so, I was thinking what are other equestrian businesses doing? Because I don't think that a lot of equestrian businesses right now are each actively trying to grow their socials. I think they want to have a social media presence, but I don't know if they're trying as much as, say, we're trying, or as some writers that are looking to get sponsorship or trying.
Speaker 3:As in like you don't actually see them, like trying different strategies or using like trending tools to basically see if it gets more growth and more traction, etc.
Speaker 2:Certainly a lot are. I mean, many are right, but most aren't, I think, because the algorithms and the strategies are continuously changing. We really have to be on top of it. You have to know, like what's hitting, like reels, how often trending music. There's so many things to know that like there's a reason why social media manager is a real job. It's a full time job.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm job and a half, so I think most people they know the importance of being online. But because everything has changed so drastically in the last well, it changes every day. I mean now there's threads, but it's changed from being a photo website Now it's more of a short form video website, which means that you need to be able to take more videos and make them interesting to watch, which requires editing and having all of that type of experience and expertise. So that's a lot of work, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's hugely time consuming, Like I mean I watch you do it and when you're in the throes of doing the creative process, it's all consuming.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it's one of those things I mean, you can try and outsource it, but you have a vision of what you kind of want the video to look like and unless you, you know, have the money to hire someone who's a natural talent, or you just get lucky and you find someone who's a natural talent, who's intuitively aligned with you, you're never really going to be perfectly happy with what they make, and so you're going to end up going back and trying to tweak it yourself anyway, which ends up taking just as much time, as you said. Like you know, it used to be quite simple, but when it was just static photos, you could outsource that relatively easily, or you could hire someone to do it for you relatively easily. But now that it's videos, it's and that's the expected medium it's so much more difficult to create and it's so much more time consuming and there is a lot more like oh, I want it this way rather than that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I tried to outsource it, I think, three times.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it was good with the ability to do different transitions, but at the end of the day, I was the one who had to come up with the ideas and I had the B-roll and it create the B-roll and the storyline. So there were just so many different components where, unless you're in my head or know everything that we're looking to accomplish, which which takes time it's really hard to outsource, at least what we're trying to do. Maybe, if you're, say, a saddle company and you've got the saddles, you've got the benefits and you could talk about very clear things and there's not really too much more than that, then maybe it'd be a little bit easier to outsource. But for us, who you know, we're about to release our technology and plus we're speaking about the global equestrian industry there's just so many different facets that kind of need to be discussed. That is. That makes it very challenging to just simply outsource it to someone.
Speaker 2:So, yes, for sure, if you just want to post an old story or post, just post a static photo or whatnot, that's very easy to do and I think that that's what most people are doing, at least if they're in maybe some of the older generations but like, how are they getting their word out. In an age where everything is online, digital, you need to be trending, you need to go viral. People need to learn about your brand if you really really want to be a big success. What can a question? Businesses do?
Speaker 1:Right, I've been seeing myself just being in the weeds of it. Equestrian apparel companies, overall, have been doing by far the greatest job at social media marketing compared to any other sorts of brands in our industry. But, with that being said, even them, they're only like one or two that I could name, and I'm not going to name them because they're not sponsored, but maybe like what one or two of them are actually really good at this, the organic traction, the social media marketing without paying for ad space. But other than that, I mean, you really just see the same crap everywhere. To be honest with you, I'm not trying to put anyone down or anything, but I think that what our industry could use is a combination of two things, one being vision.
Speaker 1:So this is what you're talking about, jen, where it's like how do we want to present our brand to our audience? And also you have to define who your audience is, which is thing number two, practice, practice conditioning, if you want to call it that. So it's who is your audience? Where does your audience exist? What hashtags do they follow? If they follow any hashtags, how much content could I actually create and distribute? And how do I even create the content, because so many of us are so busy building our product and running our businesses that marketing is the very last thing that we think of in our minds.
Speaker 1:But let me tell you something I actually grabbed coffee the other day with a developer here in Bosnia and I told him that you could develop the best product ever, but if you're not marketing it, then no one's going to use it, and that's just the bottom line. So I actually think that you could call this a crisis event. You have all these great companies in the equestrian space, but they're not marketing themselves, which just means, oh my God, we could have a gold rush. But it's also a crisis in the sense that, like, why are we not doing it? And if you don't do it now, then you're not going to get the customers not of today, but of tomorrow, and if you don't get the customers of tomorrow, then you're not going to have enough funds to keep on running your business. So this is definitely a crisis and I think more equestrian brands should engage in marketing, but through vision and practice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you made the point about the apparel companies. You're right, they do tend to do the best job when it comes to marketing and their social media footprint in the equestrian space. But I think the reason that is is it's easy. The majority of the people who operate in the equestrian space right. They sell services like boarding, barn training, or they're a horse agent that's a service. Or you're an insurance company, that's a service.
Speaker 3:It's a verb as opposed to a noun sort of thing, and it's really, really hard to create content when you can't just go outside and take some product pictures and then put it through a, some tweet, some video editing software to make it look really sexy. Instead, you've got to figure out a way. Well, how do I create content that portrays the services that I'm giving in a way that's entertaining and creative and sexy, and all that sort of stuff, which is far more complicated and that takes a level of complexity that the average person doesn't have and to make it work well and let alone go viral, not only do you have to have the idea, and that you need to have the equipment, you need to have the execution, you need to have the post production, you need to have the vision, a thing that someone who's running a boarding barn or someone is a horse trainer just hasn't got the time to do so. If they haven't got the time or the capability to do that, then how do they market a service? No-transcript. Do you have any ideas?
Speaker 2:I mean, you definitely need a digital presence, though I think more than ever having some kind of digital presence, even if you're not looking to achieve this viral worthy video, maybe building up an audience in a Facebook group or starting a blog, starting a newsletter, communicating with other people in the industry just somehow being online. Do you think that you can exist as a business without any online presence?
Speaker 3:Only at the most elite level. So an example of a business that performs very, very well without an online presence is an executive recruiter. Their whole value is the fact that they're inaccessible and that you've got to be in the know. But outside of that, if you are competing in a relatively open market, then even if you do a successful job of getting people to be interested in what you do, the first thing they do is they go to the internet, they type in your name, they look at your website and then they look for the buy button or they look for the more button or the testimonials whatever.
Speaker 3:And if they haven't got it or they're not impressed with the quality of your website, then they're immediately like yeah, maybe not. I'll keep my heart and cash in my pocket.
Speaker 2:I think it was Zara who did this. I'd have to confirm this. I think they intentionally went dark on social media as a way to promote mental health and things like that, and I think it was Zara. I'll have to fact check this. But essentially, whatever Big Bear in this was, they had even more sales, but the thing was everyone already knew about Zara.
Speaker 2:So if you're trying to launch your business, or if you're not in Zara, if you're not in the malls, where you can see the shop everywhere you go, then yeah, I think you do have the luxury of being able to sidestep the social media marketing. But if you're not Zara, then you probably need to get online.
Speaker 3:Well, actually it's a very smart strategy. So, I mean, I'm not a professional marketer, but there's a very common expression in the marketing industry which is the best marketing is free marketing that you get from the press. So that is why PR professionals exist. Their job is to basically maintain relationships with journalists in your industry so that when you do something, you can get the media to write articles about you for you, so you get their distribution and their stamp of legitimacy, but you didn't actually have to pay for it. One of these comes back to a problem.
Speaker 3:Something we discuss all the time in the equestrian industry is that such a large industry with so much money in it, the actual media environment is very immature. We've reached out a few times to some of the major publications, the major magazines, et cetera, and we're like, hey, we've got this really interesting thing we're doing. Do you want to write a story about it? And they're like, yeah, sure, it's $10,000. And we're not going to pay $10,000 for a picture of half a page in a magazine that may or may not get seen. The return on the investment isn't immediately obvious to us, and we're a tech company. That is why you go to these magazines and it's always the exact same advertisers marketing in the same magazine month after month after month. It's because all the small boarding barns or the trainers, et cetera all those people who have the small businesses their only media distribution channels are these magazines because there aren't many other options and the price to entry is so high that they can't afford it. So the point about Zara is an interesting one is like they use the media to do their marketing for them and give them a big boost, which is something that the equestrian industry needs to drastically improve upon as media space, because it just hasn't got that infrastructure there that people can go after that strategy really. So there isn't that media space there, but what the equestrian world has, which is actually pretty much better than any other culture or group I've seen in the world, is it does a very robust Facebook group community.
Speaker 3:Where has you know? Some groups have hundreds of thousands of members. A lot of them have tens of thousands of members. That are centrally located and the people in them are very, very active. This isn't so much going on Instagram and creating a reel or creating a post and putting marketing material out there, but Going into the Facebook groups, becoming a member of the Facebook groups talking about your services there, hosting an event in a Like. If you join a group and say, hey, I'm gonna host an event this Friday, guys, I'm gonna host a seminar on what I think is the best way to train your horse, etc. Especially if you host that sort of event inside a group that is considered a Local group to the local area where you're trying to find your specific customers, that is gonna get you a far better return on the investment. I would guess then, if you were to try and put out a good Instagram reel or you were trying to like pay a magazine to Put a half page in, having that direct link to your customers is something that's hugely beneficial.
Speaker 2:I think any opportunity that you get to engage with the brand and show that you're more than just a logo Especially in this day and age where people really thrive on seeing your face and understanding your values and knowing who you are and what you believe in yeah, that goes so much farther than just paying to, you know, be a logo on it on some publication.
Speaker 1:I want to bring this point that Sam made back to the whole idea of whether you're in a relatively open market or not. And let's be honest, while the Facebook groups are great for in a closed market setting, they are a closed market setting because you have to request to be part of at least half of these Facebook groups and you have to have some sort of verification system. Even for the ones that are open, you have to basically prove that you live in whatever County. I'm not gonna mention specific ones because I don't want to be you want to give a shameless plug to your old Florida County.
Speaker 1:Okay, broward County, just you were.
Speaker 2:you were a Broward boy, I was an orange County girl, oh.
Speaker 3:God, you can hear the snobbering through the microphone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I could hear it across the Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 3:I can feel the dirty, greasy ooze of arrogance from across the ocean.
Speaker 2:We thought we were special because the orange County in Florida sounded like the orange County in California that is the epitome of lying to yourself to deny your reality.
Speaker 1:You guys don't have see and we do. So there's that. But anyway, getting back to equestrian, you really have to think about it from that angle because if you're in a closed environment market and, for example, me being in Bosnia, like, I personally know the owner of a restaurant here that the food is pretty good, it's pretty cheap. So everyone in the city just kind of comes to it. And I was talking to him last night and he is third generation. That's just how things work here.
Speaker 1:The family business is still very much a thing and this part of Europe is in the Balkans, but anyway, I mean, this is more or less a closed market environment, because Tulsla, which is the third biggest city in Bosnia, is really not that touristy of a place. So therefore, who are the majority of people who are gonna come to this kind of restaurant? People who are already there, who is gonna be the majority of people who join these Facebook groups for equestrian? People who are already there, people who are already participating in equestrian, and well, that's great in the sense that if you're the admin for a very big equestrian community, great, you kind of have a monopoly over it.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, social media marketing ends up beating the Facebook groups in the end, when it comes to making it a more open market environment, and I think it's also the classical marketing problem, or should I say paradigm, of you have this one thing demand and then you could either capture the demand that already exists, which is exactly what these Facebook groups do, versus create the demand, make something super sexy, make something Interesting enough where more people who never thought about doing it before are gonna do it. I see this logo, just this little b, and I immediately think of dr Dre, high audio quality, apple, really good technology, you know all. Because of this be so I want it. I'd rather have this be than the other be. That starts with Bose, right?
Speaker 3:That's a bad idea. By the way, bose is a way better product, but continue.
Speaker 1:Even like like you see, I'm the kind of consumer in that space I still I prefer beats just because of that sort of emotional connection. And you're talking about someone who, again, like I, would have not really known that if it weren't for all the advertising and marketing that beats had done. So you're bringing a new consumer into the marketplace and you're making the marketplace bigger, and then you're the number one in your category. If only we could transition to that. Facebook groups great, I think we should keep them. But let's transition to making the market a bit more open.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean you're, you're right. I mean, there's definitely a strong case to be said for create content or create marketing material that has no borders, that can touch people all over the world and could bring in warm leads into your company Without you having to physically reach out to them and get them. The thing you're forgetting, though, in some respect, is that a lot of equestrian businesses are geographically restricted, right, I mean, yes, you have a lot of apparel shops that might run a question. Apparel store through a Shopify store. They have no brick and mortar presence. They have a website. You buy the product and then they ship it to you anywhere in the world.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, in that case, what you're saying is 100% accurate. But if you're a training barn or a boarding barn and you're looking for clients, I mean there's a physical world reality here in which you need to find people who are commutable distance, people who can commute to you while also commuting to work on the same day. So, for that case, having access to those Facebook groups and knowing that every single person in this group is geographically restricted to this area, that is the perfect place to go. But the question I got for you guys is you guys spend more time in the Facebook groups than I do. Do you see people flogging their business in the groups, and do the administrators of the groups tolerate that? Or do they kick them out and like get angry at them that they're like taking this group that's supposed to be an organic place for a question to help one another and they get frustrated by the fact that brands try to take advantage of that and basically market their product.
Speaker 2:It depends on the rules of the group. So there are some groups that are designed exactly for that, especially community groups where they do want to promote the local businesses or the intention of the group is for buying and selling what have you. So they want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to do that. But I've also seen many groups where you're not supposed to do that and people do, and then they get their warning and are kicked out they get scolded.
Speaker 2:But I have noticed too, like even groups that are more communal focused and you are allowed to promote your business. It still comes across sometimes a little bit spammy if it's not done in a way where you actually are engaging with everyone around you. It's like putting up flyers on trees around you, yeah yeah, yeah, why should?
Speaker 2:I care about this, unless it's something that looks really interesting. It's like, okay, yeah, there's another boarding bar and well, what makes you different? Why? Why should I put my horses in your staple versus where they're currently based? So I think, yeah, I don't know, settings are your question.
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Speaker 3:I'm excited you ought to talk about your story.
Speaker 1:If you insist, everyone who's listening to this podcast right now, don't stop. The reason why is that we can learn a lot from formula one. What is formula one doing? Formula one recently announced that they are coming out with the first arcade in the United States, specifically in Boston. It's going to come out in early 2024. What do I mean by arcade? I mean literally, they're going to have 69 different machines where you sit down in a chair like this or a more fancy chair that resembles like one in a car in formula one. You're driving and you're in front of a screen, and then you could ride against your friends who are sitting next to you in different machines. You could also grab drinks. I guess you could drink and drive at this arcade. I don't keep doing that. I guess, in this situation, you can drink and drive as long as you ride the tea Boston's Metro system. After you do that. Anyway, you could also eat at this arcade.
Speaker 1:I think that this is a genius idea, but why is this related to equestrian? So I think that this is related to equestrian for two different reasons, one being that, let's say I'm someone and this is true I don't know anything about formula one. I know that a lot of people enjoy it. I know that you have the Grand Prix and Monaco, miami, all these exotic places, but at the same time I don't really know the difference between formula one versus NASCAR, let alone. I'm not interested at all in watching these kinds of races. But let's say, my friends invite me in Boston to go out with them on a Friday night to this arcade. I'm exposed to formula one and now all of a sudden, I think that this is exciting.
Speaker 1:Those on the call who are actually watching this right now. You see, I'm wearing an FC Barcelona shirt. I was not previously a soccer slash football fan, but now I am, in the sense that I don't keep up with it, but I enjoy playing it. I enjoy watching it a lot more than I did before I came to Europe because of all this exposure that I'm getting to soccer slash football. So the same thing could apply to equestrian, where the more you are exposed to something, the more comfortable you are with it. So you have that brand awareness, slash recognition for equestrian.
Speaker 1:That's point number one. But point number two and I think that this is even more important than that first point is that you're making people have the opportunity to understand horse sports more and how they actually work, because now, when you make them engage in horse sports via a game, you're making them actually play hunter, jumper, you're making them play eventing, things like that. So, as a result, you actually understand the rules. You might have interest in going to, let's say, long jeans, for example, because now you understand how it works and how you could become a fan of it, because you've got so many people who simply don't understand the rules there is to an equestrian event or horse sports competition, so I think this could be huge. I'm not saying that our industry is at a stage where we could have these arcades maybe we are, maybe we're not but on a more realistic entry level basis, we could at least have VR apps or apps on the app store for your phone, your tablet, even your computer or whatever, to play it as a game. So, opening up the floor.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mean the idea of creating an arcade, I think is a bit unrealistic for the horse world One, because so the problem the horse world has is that there's 54 disciplines. Let's say, for example, a billionaire walked in here and was like I'm going to create this arcade, we're going to do horses. Then, yeah, there's a very solid argument that you could have 54 different stations and each station explain what each discipline was in a way that was entertaining. But I don't think people would really use it. And the only reason Formula One is able to do this is because it's coming off the back of Netflix's Formula One Drive to Survive series, which has drastically improved the popularity of the sport. Without that DSF one arcade would have flopped and probably never would have been able to get investors to back it in the first place, because you wouldn't have been able to prove that the demand was there.
Speaker 2:But it brings up a really Well, they did racing arcades and stuff those racing games.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're very popular.
Speaker 2:But I'd be curious to know how many people even go to arcades anymore. I feel like everything's digital.
Speaker 3:They've got the the wheeze and we go every now and then and they're, like usually pretty empty. We have a lot of fun, but they're pretty empty.
Speaker 1:I want go carding last year, like real go carding, but they also had an arcade and a bowling rally alley, not rally bowling alley All within the same thing and I did all three in the same night. People they still love in person interaction.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think there's definitely a place for it. I mean, there was an arcade place in Austin, right when we are, and I was super into F1. And if I went to this F1 rather than going to top swing, top golf, what's it called?
Speaker 3:Top golf where you can drink and top golf, rather than going to top golf where you drink beers and hit golf clubs. Instead, you drink beers and you get into a really high quality virtual simulator where you can pretend you're racing an F1 car and you can race your mates. I could totally see that working. But the point I was going to make it relate to the equestrian world is that this comes back to a bigger problem in the equestrian industry, which is that how do you educate the masses about horse sports when there's 54 different horse sports, right? So F1 has had to invest tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars over the last five years to basically inspire the next generation to be into F1.
Speaker 3:And that was one sport right, it was in one. It was one sport that was glamorous, with the same routine, characters being the drivers competing. The exact same sport in the exact same format, which makes it relatively easy for someone to get around the horse sports. You have 54 sports. The sports are all wildly different. The rules change every three to 12 months. They're constantly changing the rules to accommodate some asterisks that someone was unhappy with. So how do you get the public to understand a complex sport like that? And I think the only way you can do it is you've literally got to just pick one or two or three.
Speaker 2:More, I think, because you've got a bunch in Western that's interesting.
Speaker 3:You could pick one, two okay, let's say you can pick five and really just get people interested in that and get them to be so interested in it that they're passionate enough to then maybe potentially go. Oh, maybe I will explore some of the other ones, but you just got to go after a few. And I think that's kind of where Yellowstone has been really, really successful for reigning and cutting where as a TV show, as a marketing channel.
Speaker 2:I don't think you necessarily need people to get into each and every one though, Because even for me, right, I'm an inventor. I mostly care about inventing. I know how a lot of the other rules work in different disciplines, but I don't know as well as I do in inventing, and honestly, in a lot of them I don't necessarily care to know it intimately, because I'm not gonna go to say, a Paso Fino show. I don't know how Paso Finos are judged. I can appreciate it, but I'm not gonna be passionately into it, and that is okay. So I think what's more important is that all these different disciplines are at least represented in some capacity where people can discover them and then find out. Oh, I really like the eventing stuff. I really like what the cowboys are doing and the cutting looks really exciting.
Speaker 3:So but this is kind of the problem in itself, right, Like you are an equestrian you have you've competed your entire life. You have been trained to understand equestrian sports from the moment you could basically walk and talk, right? So if anyone is, and you run a technology company that serves all disciplines and even you aren't really interested to go too far outside your discipline, so how can you convince the public, how can you convince people on scale to go outside their discipline?
Speaker 2:I don't think they need to, though, why do they need to go outside their discipline? I think the fact that they're just passionate about equestrian and are supportive of the equestrian industry and want to be an enthusiast of horse sports, that's what we need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah so for example, someone who's like horse sports oh, are you a jockey? I mean, that's not good. People need to be at least kind of attuned to. Hey, you are an equestrian. So being able to go to an event and watch with their friends and have a picnic and I think that's more common in Europe, I don't think that's necessarily common here unless you do polo or something, but so I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't think you need to know all the different disciplines and exactly how they work, for example. I am interested in other disciplines. I've tried raining, I've tried some barrel racing stuff, Obviously, did a hundred jumper and dressage and different things like that. I've only competed in a hundred jumper, dressage, short jumping and eventing, so it's kind of under the same umbrella, but that's okay. I mean, I'm a proponent of horse sports and trying different things and encouraging other people to try different things. And also you're kind of at I don't want to say the mercy of your horse, but maybe your horse is best suited for one and they don't like being around cows, or you're in an area that doesn't have access to different types of sports. I think as long as you have the option and you have the connection with the public so that they're able to get involved in some capacity, that's the most important thing. You do crossfit, but do you know exactly how the weightlifting stuff works, all the rules of weightlifting, I mean?
Speaker 2:technically you're lifting weights and you don't really care about the weightlifting industry.
Speaker 3:But that actually backs up my perspective on it, which is that In order to build infrastructure and by infrastructure I mean in order to build a TV show that has a passionate following, to build a brand that has a passionate member base, in order to build a team that people are excited to support then it's hard to do that if you're just talking about attention in general as opposed to attention to specific disciplines.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it depends on what you're trying to achieve. If your objective is to get the masses to be involved in understanding some of the questions like, ok, well, what are the most popular ones? What are the events where people can go to in your area? So Hunter Jumper is a very good example of a really common and accessible event that takes place in most areas of the country, and Jumper is exciting, right Like you can sit there and you can watch horses jump really high. It's pretty objective and it's a good spectator sport. Even that said, most people don't know about jumpers.
Speaker 2:So I would think if my objective was to get more people to know about equestrian, then yeah, it would be great to do a Netflix drive to survive. Start off with show jumping, make it the most easy to understand, lowest barrier to entry, get people excited, wanting to find jumping competitions in the area. Come there, bring your friends, have a drink, watch an exciting hour or two of competition and then maybe that'll be the gateway drug to learn about other equestrian sports when it's like, oh that's cool, what else exists? I just thought the only equestrian sport was racing. You know there's this thing and, wow, it takes place every single weekend in so many different areas around my city, I had no idea Right. So let's just start with one. Get people interested in knowing that horse sports is more than just the Kentucky Derby.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then let their curiosity pick from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree with this, because so for three years of my life actually three and a half, if you also consider my little stint in college I was a debater and I did an event called Congress, which basically meant that, depending on the tournament and its structure, I was either a representative as a member of the House of Representatives and this is America, by the way, if you're a British or something like that and or Sam, australian, and, but Sam understands you as Paul, the parliamentary system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is our parliamentary system in the United States, and then, because we're a bicameral legislature and then I would be a senator at certain tournaments, and then we basically debate on pieces of legislation. But in the debate community it's actually not just debate. We call it speech and debate. So you have all these events that are in debate, like Lincoln Douglas, where it's like Abraham Lincoln versus I think it was Stephen Douglas or kind of style debating in that presidential election or whatever the context was. You have policy debate where they literally speak their own language. Then you have speech, where you have humorous interpretation, which basically means that you could either use someone else's script or you could use your own script that you make and then you just act it out and it's supposed to be funny as hell. That's actually what Josh Gad Olaf from Frozen. That's what he did in my county, howard County, and he also did dramatic interpretation. I think he was world champion and one or both.
Speaker 1:The point being is that I don't know the rules of most of these events. Yet we were all just one community. Why? Because one tournament would host all of these events, or at least most of these events. I knew people from different events as well, like public forum, lincoln, douglas, humorous interpretation, etc. So I mean, the point being is that I agree with Genware. Just give them that one gateway drug, give them that one event that they're most likely going to be interested in and, boom, they have the whole world of horse sports and equestrian just at their disposal. So in the end, what we could all probably agree on, that it's best if we do focus on marketing a handful of the sports, but then it has to be the user experience. Once they're in one of those four or five sports, the user has to have very easy accessibility to the idea of oh we have 90 others that you could check out if you want.
Speaker 2:Totally agree.
Speaker 3:Well, here's a curveball for you both.
Speaker 3:So the industry in general, like any sport, is constantly trying to recruit new people into the sport.
Speaker 3:It's trying to recruit new fans to the sport and it's trying to grow the sport a total addressable market in general. That's any sports main objective. Let's say, for example, there was a global committee that managed the global equestrian sport not the FBI as a regulator, but like the way in which the NFL has the champions of the NFL teams and they get together and they basically figure out how to make sure it continues to make them all wealthy. If the equestrian industry globally had a committee like that, do you think they would be best off trying to spend their time and resources trying to figure out how to recruit non spectators to be spectators? Or do you think there's a big enough internal market being the people who already competitors, people who already ride, people who rode growing up, go to college and then stop riding, people who are just equestrian enthusiasts Do you think it's better off just trying to get them to be more engaged fans rather than trying to recruit non equestrians to be fans?
Speaker 2:I think the equations are already fans and they already have a sense of what the industry is. So if the intention is to get more people to be in the sport horse industry, you got to help educate the non equestrian enthusiasts to bring more people into it.
Speaker 3:So let's say, for example, at the moment you go on one of the streaming services like Clip my Horse or Horse and Country. Right, if we were on it regularly, would you be tuning in to watch a cutting competition as an event? Probably not right, like you might watch Hunter Jumper, you might watch Tricycle, you might watch Eventing, but the cutting discipline isn't getting the audience because people aren't going out of their disciplines that much to watch other disciplines. So if you're the team, if you're this committee, you're thinking about from the perspective of do we spend a lot of time and resources trying to get someone who doesn't understand horses at all to try to get more engaged in horse sports, or should we focus our resources and try to get people who are interested in English disciplines to get more interested in Western disciplines, because they're already half-bored in?
Speaker 2:No, and a lot of these horses are not built for that and they don't have the interest in pursuing the different discipline. I mean, I think it's really good, like I said, to try different disciplines and I think there's a lot of benefits and, frankly, it's just really fun to try different things. But no, don't fish in the same waters. Try to recruit more people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Show that this is possible, which I think Yellowstone is doing a really good job of, because so many people now want to participate in the Western sports, because they see how cool the lifestyle is and how exciting it is, they understand it a little bit more. But you're not helping the industry if you're taking fish from one side and then just bringing them to your side. The industry needs more new blood pumped into it.
Speaker 1:More fish.
Speaker 2:More fish, more fish.
Speaker 1:We need more fish because I'm hungry and I want to eat some more fish. So I really, I really agree with you, Jim, because the thing is that think of it this way from a socializing standpoint If you got more fish in a question which doesn't make sense because fish don't ride horses, so if you got more people, I really believe that if you've got a ton of people talking about doing something, then the person in the room who's not part of that conversation but could hear the conversation is feeling some sort of fear of missing out. And I think when you recruit more people who did not previously do equestrian to do equestrian now, those people who did equestrian for like 20 years but no longer do equestrian, they see how popular it's getting and they're kind of like, oh fuck, that's all kind of making me feel like I want to get back involved, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:You can always take a lesson in a different discipline, assuming that there is proper instruction and the facilities are nearby where you can try it. But think each discipline not only are the horses usually different, but the tack, the training, the barn that you're at it's all very different. You need a lot of new stuff to participate properly in different disciplines and that stuff costs a shit ton of money. When I took a reigning lesson, for example, as an Ocala, there's a lot of different kinds of disciplines in Ocala. It's a horse mecca.
Speaker 2:We my mom and I we went to a reigning barn. We rode their horses with their own tack and the woman there was an instructor in reigning for decades. I knew what she was talking about. But we did not just take our own horses, buy new tack, drive out to this woman who we had never met before. Our thoroughbreds weren't used to that. So even if we wanted to take a lesson, not only are we teaching ourselves or teaching our horses. So I think it's really healthy to dabble on its fun and I encourage it. But to just assume, oh, you can swap on over, it's not just a weekend's decision Okay, I think, unless you're.
Speaker 3:Uber, uber. Yeah, I think, I think we're. I think we're kind of talking past each other, because I wasn't. I'm sorry, I I maybe I was unclear. I wasn't saying we should get inventors to become Reigners.
Speaker 3:I was looking at this from the perspective of the return on the investment for the brands and the sponsors at sponsor events that make a lot of horse shows profitable, right? So what you guys are saying, which is very accurate, which is that the majority of the money in the question industry comes from people participating in the question industry. They register, so they pay registration fees, they buy horses, they buy tack, they buy apparel. That is where the majority of the money in the economy comes from, and in that case, you're right Getting more people to come to the sport, as well as more people to stay in the sport rather than dropping off when they get to 18. Probably should be where the majority of the time and money is spent. But you're looking at it from the perspective, which is what the F1 and stuff have done is Well, how do we create fans? Maybe not people who participate in F1, but people who watch it, and the amount of people who watch it is an increase on the viewer numbers that the people who are selling sponsorship deals can basically show them and say this is the return on the investment as being a sponsor. Then I think there's.
Speaker 3:I don't know the answer, but I think there's an interesting conversation there which is like is it harder to try and convince a member of the public who doesn't understand the horse world to try and get excited about horse sports, or is it? Is it a more worthy expenditure of time and resources to try and get already in question enthusiasts to get interested in watching other disciplines, even if all they're doing is watching it? And if you're doing that, you're not competing discipline to discipline. What you're competing with is Netflix. How do I get an inventor to watch a reigning competition rather than watching a new movie on Netflix? I come competing for their time and their attention when they're not watching an equestrian competition or an equestrian sport. That's in their discipline. I'm trying to get them to watch a different discipline and increase those viewer numbers for a different discipline, rather than, when there's nothing on an eventing, going and just watching a Netflix movie.
Speaker 1:Okay, but I have a question how many? How many people go to a reigning competition, For example, down average, how many people in person go to one? Let's be honest.
Speaker 3:To a reigning.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:The big ones are actually quite big, but the small ones, but like the outside of the big ones, not a huge amount, usually just the competitors and the staff and family. The competitors, okay.
Speaker 1:So basically no spectators, right? So that's reigning. Would you say that this is pretty consistent for most horse sports.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So the general rule of Thumb Horse Sports is that there's a few large events each year per discipline that get the public to turn up. But outside of those few events, the majority of horse shows are just the riders, their staff and then their family members who turn up to see their loved ones could pay.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. This is exactly why we need to grow and focus growing the sport with more people. Because, you see, the problem is that what you're saying is correct, in the sense that we yeah, we are competing against Netflix, we're competing for people to come to more eventing competitions rather than watching Bird Box or the Witcher or watching TikTok, for example, because we're competing for people's attention. But, at the same time, when you get more people interested in this thing, then they bring their friends and then everyone's just kind of talking about it, and then the people who, like I said before, they're in the room and they hear about it, or they hear about it just through the grapevine they'll feel the fear of missing out, and so they'll go to the competition as well. So that's the best way to grow this industry, because you're basically getting more spectators, which means more money being pumped into the industry, whether it's catering at events, slash competitions or merchandise being sold at these events or competitions, bigger sponsorship deals for these events, competitions, etc. So, in order to grow the sport, I'm not saying that what you're saying is wrong, but what I'm saying is that we should just prioritize getting more people, and that will also have what you're saying, which is, those people who are already involved, to be more interested in being cross-disciplined minded. I think that will happen naturally as we bring more fish in the water.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening to the latest episode of the Pegasus podcast. As you heard from our mid-wool, we are also releasing an equestrian event management software platform. Now it's easier than ever to host, sign up and sponsor for any equestrian event in the world, thanks to all the features of the Pegasus app. To sign up, go to our homepage at thepegasusapp. That is T-H-E-P-E-G-A-S-U-S dot app. Thank you again and see you next time.