Today we live in a mobile digital world.
Most people these days have the internet in their pocket on their smartphone.
Most people ON a trotting track these days have grey hair.
In 10 or more years 70% of them or more will not be with us.
Hence we need new people.
We need to connect with them thru Social Media, cos thats where they are.
Its the biggest shift in technology and communication EVER and its happening virally faster than most realise.
Make it specky, make it exciting, make it social, make it fun, make it relevant.
The trots should be on Instagram, with shots from a sulky, shots from the bar, shots from the grandstand, shots from a Go-Pro camera looking back at the driver mounted on the saddle.
To CONNECT with nearly anyone under 50 years of age, you will find them,(and might i say way cheaper than TV ads and other traditional forms of advertising that were all relevant 20 years and 10 and 5 years ago,) on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc.
I was in San Diego recently at the IHRSA World Fitness Convention and Trade Show, and of the key speakers to present to the absolute most powerful Club Owners in the US Europe Asia NZ and Australia was a guy called Gary Vaynerchuk and he blew the 2000 people away. He was the only person over 4 days to get a standing ovation, it was amazing, incredible, moving, stunning, i left that presentation went back to my hotel room and went online to buy 2 of his books. he was all about Social Media and he grabbed those 2000 people by the shirt, slapped them in the face and told them they are ALL advertising in a 2004 kind of way expecting a 2014 result. Ya gotta change. Ya gotta get relevant. Ya gotta get CURRENT.
Now i am not saying this is THE answer but by hell if you are not on it, you’re not in it. You wanna learn about Social Media, google Gary, and if you don’t think this is real, by hell you will change your mind if you read enough, it won’t take long.

I think the Kids trot races are one of the cleverest innovations. Its gets the kids a taste of the electricity of being in a race and funnels them into junior drivers and so on.
Their families follow them thru their journey, their friends come to the track to watch and you must imagine it should produce us better drivers in the long term. Just like most Formula 1 race car drivers started in go-karts, makes sense.

As others have alluded to, how about pushing syndicates?
Have a marketing team put together a package to sell to businesses from a staff bonding, Team Building, Social Committee point of view that brings the staff together and to bond out of work. Employees are always after a great staff environment and want to be known as a “preferred employer”.
The company could buy a $10,000 or $20,000 racing pacer. The staff can "buy in" for $50, $100, $500 or whatever, hell the company can even make a profit on it if they are smart. It can be part owned or at least guided by a HRV staff member (for example) who get a local Melton trainer to PRIMARILY race at Melton cos most syndicate owners may live not too far away.
Each club could have a similar concept where the sole purpose of this horse with maybe 100 owners or 10 owners race regularly at each local meeting to get as many owners TO THE TRACK as possible. And of course they will bet…
Sell 100 syndicates around Australia and thats a lot of people. Give each horse a Facebook page that the owners regularly go to and virally all the “friends” of the owners find out about the trots!