The Big Picture Presented By Excel Equine: Are Influencers The Answer?

According to 1/ST, the parent company of Gulfstream Park, Earle’s appearance helped craft the image and inspired increased viewership, brand awareness, and engagement with the Pegasus World Cup as a major sports and entertainment event.

“Her fans followed her on social, and we saw a huge bump on our television broadcast,” said Gregg Colvin, CEO of 1/ST Content and chief marketing officer of 1/ST. “I’m not saying it was directly related because there are other elements, but the last quarter hour from the time she did “Riders up!” to the race, we almost doubled our viewership.”

FanDuel TV’s Christina Blacker posted on X (formerly Twitter), “24 hours later and her Pegasus related videos have over 6.5 million views and counting. Yes. we have major issues to continue to address and improve but promotion / awareness and positive publicity to a younger generation is a good thing. If a fraction of those people go to Gulfstream this meet and become fans, it’s a win.”

The hope expressed in Blacker’s post and by other supporters of having more “influencer marketing” in horse racing is that the millions of people that follow Earle’s social media accounts (6.4 million on TikTok and 3.4 million on Instagram) will follow her (both physically and digitally) to the racetrack. It’s been called the “Alix Earle Effect,” and some brands reportedly pay her tens of thousands of dollars to be associated with her.

The extreme pervasiveness of social media has put a big spotlight on a group of content creators referred to as “influencers” because they have “influence” over a large following to whom they directly communicate through their social media channels. That was the thought process behind 1/ST’s marketing team collaborating with Earle to be part of Pegasus festivities in 2023 and 2024.

“If we take a step back, we can all admit that the complexion of horse racing has changed pretty dramatically over the last 15, 20 years,” Colvin said. “Belinda [Stronach] is really focused – and by virtue of that, we’re all focused – on transforming our sport and reinventing it for a new generation. [Earle] has the eyes, ears, and following of a new generation.”

Colvin cited “new and young users,” “immediacy,” “connection,” and “virality” as the unique aspects that influencer marketing allows horse racing to tap into.

Yet, as different as the execution looks, the goals of influencer marketing aren’t that different from when track publicity departments invite “traditional” news media to attend the racetrack in hopes that they produce stories about track happenings. 1/ST said it didn’t pay Earle to be at the Pegasus and that they don’t pay the other influencers they invite to Gulfstream or any of the company’s other racetracks. 1/ST said it also doesn’t dictate what the influencers cover. However, the company does make sure to expose the influencers to aspects of horse racing, such as the lifestyle of a big race day and the care horses at the track receive, in hopes that the coverage is positive.

The key is that the values of the influencer align with the values of the brand. In the case of Earle, she’s local to Miami. Images of her at the Pegasus show her dancing, hanging out with other young people, and projecting an experience 1/ST hopes her followers will want to have as well.

Another racetrack that aligns itself with influencers for these very reasons is Del Mar. The track near San Diego has partnered with influencers like Erica Shutty, who describes herself as “Southern California Guide” on her Instagram profile that has more than 70,000 followers, to produce content about a day at the races. Although that’s less than 3 percent of the number of followers on Instagram that Earle has, it’s about targeting the specific audience that already follows Shutty’s @whatericacraves account.

“Our influencer campaign is set up mostly to support the on-track attendance goal – to support that vibrant on-track experience where people want to be at the races,” Del Mar’s vice president of marketing, Erin Bailey, said. “We feel like that’s vital to the health of the sport to continue to create new fans and to bring in the younger crowds.”

While Bailey sees the benefit of partnering with influencers to promote the lifestyle qualities of horse racing and a day at the races – as well as to get Del Mar’s sponsors in front of influencers’ large audiences – she said the strategy doesn’t necessarily have the same effect for promoting other aspects of horse racing, such as gambling or horse ownership.

“I would just say in my experience and in our experience at Del Mar that for the most part influencers tend to speak to that more active, younger audience better,” Bailey said. “If you’re trying to reach a bettor or handicapper, we have found that there’s better ways. What they want is more like ‘inside-baseball’ information from us. It’s a different audience. They play in different spaces.”

That’s what the critics of having influencers like Earle spreading horse racing’s message point to. However, this criticism is more indicative of bigger questions about what horse racing represents and who best represents the image of the sport.

Mike Repole, the outspoken owner of Repole Stables, gave his recommendation for a better influencer for horse racing – Dave Portnoy, the polarizing founder and owner of Barstool Sports. The day after the Pegasus, Repole posted on X, “Dave @stoolpresidente your influence in a sport that you truly are passionate about and love would be a game changer for the industry. The ability and impact to attract the 15-40 year old consumer would be massive. As an added bonus it could eliminate the snowflakes in the sport. The future New Guard of horse racing.”

“The message with the fashion and events and influencers is generally just, ‘Hey, look what I’m doing, now, hey, come out to the track,’” Bailey explained. “With the bettor or the handicapper, in our experience, there’s just so much more of a message that you have to get out to them. We could do something talking about our mandatory payouts, but if they’re a true bettor or handicapper, they’re already going to know that.”

It doesn’t have to be one or the other, but in a matchup of Earle vs. Portnoy – representing partying vs. gambling at the races – marketing teams at racetracks must decide with whom they would prefer to align. Since the content influencers produce is very much tied to their own identity and brand, who the influencer is certainly puts a stamp on, but sometimes also overshadows, their content.

Ultimately, the best results are achieved when the influencer can raise the profile of the sport, and there isn’t a better example of that than what Jake Paul has done for boxing. Paul has more than 20 million subscribers on YouTube. In August 2018, Paul fought an amateur boxing match against a YouTuber from England. It wasn’t about benefiting boxing; it was about how boxing could benefit the YouTubers’ profiles. Similarly, it’s a fair question to ask: Did Alix Earle benefit the Pegasus, or did the Pegasus benefit Alix Earle? Given that it’s fresh, that question may be tough to answer, but looking back five years to Paul vs. Olatunji, it’s safe to say that wasn’t Ali vs. Foreman.

However, Paul cultivated his relationship with boxing. He turned professional in 2020. His first pro fights came against a YouTuber, a retired NBA basketball player, and a former MMA fighter. Yes, a lot of people tuned in, but it wasn’t to watch boxing per se. It was to watch Paul.

But, along the way, Paul professed his commitment to the sport. He founded “Most Valuable Promotions,” and one of the fighters MVP has signed is world champion Amanda Serrano, helping raise the profile of and give more opportunities to female boxers. Paul also founded “Boxing Bullies” to use boxing as a platform to combat bullying. Paul improved his own boxing skills, and his recent fights have been against other professional boxers. That’s caused some important people within boxing circles to notice. There’s now an authenticity to the connection between Paul and boxing, and whoever horse racing’s most valuable influencer will be, that person must also have that authenticity.

“He’s been a boxer, and he’s seen the benefits of it,” said Billy Walsh, the head boxing coach for the U.S. Olympic team who is also a horse racing fan and has previously owned racehorses. “He has a couple of clubs where he’s taken kids off the streets, and now he’s wanting to give back to USA Boxing. He has seen what boxing does. Boxing changes lives.”

In December 2023, USA Boxing announced a “first-of-its-kind partnership” between Paul and USA Boxing. Paul will cover the U.S. Olympic boxing team on its road to Paris 2024, as well as provide training to U.S. boxers about how to build their own brands.

“With his expertise in the area that he’s in, he’s going to share that with our team and help them,” Walsh said. “It’s a new world, and I’m an old guy. I didn’t grow up with social media and don’t particularly like it. I’m not familiar with it, but that’s what this generation has grown up with. This is how they live their lives. So, we have to harness that and hopefully make something positive out of it.”

In exchange, Walsh agreed to coach Paul, similar to how other professionals come to USA Boxing’s training center in Colorado to work with Walsh and his team.

“There’s a bit of give-and-take,” Walsh said. “I’m going to do some work with him. We might even get him to do a few rounds with some of the athletes. We’ll take it from there, but the whole idea is for him to share his knowledge and teach these kids how to market themselves and how to promote themselves going forward. In the meantime, we’re going to help him prepare for his next fight.”

This is the ideal relationship: when the values of the influencer and the brand align, when the influencer and the brand are there to support each other. Hopefully, horse racing can find that knockout punch as well. What 1/ST has done with Earle and Del Mar with its partner influencers have shown positive results without substantial costs. It took years to cultivate between Paul and boxing, but that’s the type of chemistry that horse racing can hopefully establish with an influencer of similar magnitude.

“We need the characters,” Walsh said. “Horse racing needs characters. They need guys out there that can talk the talk.”