Melton has pokies and trots, Horsham has pokies and trots, Stawell has pokies and trots, Kilmore has pokies and trots .....
Some form of entertainment needs to be happening at all our trots venues or else the tracks are just underutilized facilities (how I saw my old Yarra Glen track)

But in the end harness racing still has to be attractive and grab an audience or else one day the facilities will be circled by housing not tracks.
Let us say the pokies rooms and restaurants are supplying most of the revenue for the trots (which I think some are declaring to be the case in the US) at what point do the trots no longer become a vital part of the equation.

If you are running subsidiary businesses to fund another business it has to be seen as worth doing it for.
The ethics of Pokies joints being run to fund football clubs is debatable but there is no doubting that people care about football
If a pokies joint was being run to fund a theatre company that nobody gave a rats about - how long before the survival of the theatre company becomes questionable. I would think only until the old brigade are gone.

Gerry Ryan pouring money into Australian cycling/Orica Greenedge team will only last as long as Gerry is around unless people are interested in the cycling product, in which case someone else will keep it going

I fear I am going around in circles (its the drugs) but the crux of it would seem to be having a product that people care about for there are hundreds of things for people to bet on.
For sustainability we have to tap into peoples love of beautiful animals, of horses, of standardbred horses or else it may as well be cartoon video racing

We need champion equine athletes and we need them to get air time - that is a major role for administrators. If we had a standardbred equivalent of Black Caviar going around would the public even hear about it

Our newspapers are full of absolute garbage football stories for filler and yet we cannot get a column inch about ITMQ in some of them