Musburger, Todd talk Triple Crown, prediction markets

Brent Musburger and Chuck Todd had not met before last week. One reason is their TV careers took them into different spheres. One is a Hall of Fame sportscaster, the other a respected political reporter.

One thing they have in common is betting. They push their dollars with both hands into sports wagers, and they love to talk about it. Musburger, who turns 87 on Tuesday, has gone from decades on CBS, ABC and ESPN to make appearances on the Vegas Stats and Information Network that his family created in 2017. Todd, 54, formerly of NBC News, regularly talks about football betting on the Tony Kornheiser Show podcast when he is not fronting Decision Desk HQ and hosting his Chuck ToddCast.

Preakness 2027 may be closer to calendar date.

They also have opinions about horse racing and what it can do to maintain its presence in an ever-crowded space that now embraces prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket.

Musburger, who is based this time of year in Montana, and Todd, who lives in Washington D.C., got together for the first time digitally Wednesday. The entire 48-minute conversation may be heard on Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod. Their discussion of racing is distilled here.

Computer-assisted wagering has become such a huge controversy in horse racing. The everyday player is feeling squeezed. You see the frustration with the past-post, last click when the odds change on your horse even after the race has begun. Computer teams that can make thousands of bets in a microsecond are flooding the market in horse racing. Do you guys make a comparison between horse racing and other sports, and what do we do about it?

Musburger: As Chuck knows with the stock market, go to the computer and play it. When you watch the stock market come down the stretch, I usually try to watch the last 30 or 15 minutes. That’s when those numbers change dramatically. It’s all computer technology that’s doing it with the buying and selling. Now when we’re in this AI age, and Chuck probably knows a lot more about that than I do, I do keep an eye on several of those stocks, Nvidia being one of them. I would advise everybody who likes sports gambling like Chuck and I, put a little bit aside in the stock market. You don’t lose 100% like you do with a sports bet.

Todd: It’s funny you say that, Brent, because it’s actually the thing that’s most appealing to me. I’m of two minds in the prediction markets. I’ve got friends that are lobbying in the sports-gaming industry, and they’re really upset about it. But the concept of the prediction markets, I’ll give you an example from last year. I’m a homer when it comes to the Miami Hurricanes. I love them, so I bought a flyer on them. I did this on a prediction market for Miami to win the whole thing. I decided to cash it the week before, so I was able to make money. The idea that you could make a season-long prediction truly more like a share of stock. Hey, I got in on this team before the rest of the public picked up on the fact that this team’s going to be one of the top five in the country. You’re able to realize that money without having to do other hedging games. There’s obviously always ways if you’re holding a nice season-long ticket. You can bet your way out of it. This is one part of sports gaming that is starting to imitate the stock market that I don’t hate. I know not everybody loves this, but I don’t hate that part of it.

Musburger: Listen, I play Kalshi, and I’m not afraid to admit it.

Todd: I look at them. I guess I just admitted it, and I’m a little afraid to admit it. I’ll admit it.

Musburger: Federally, it’s legal state by state. If you’re playing Kalshi in Nevada, you’re not going to be allowed to bet on sports. They won’t allow you in, because it’s illegal. You can bet on elections and things like that going forward. I’ve always said I think the horse-racing industry is making a mistake now because they were able to block them from booking the Kentucky Derby. If you take a look specifically at the National Hockey League, which has made an agreement with Polymarket and Kalshi, you see the ads on the boards in all the Stanley Cup games. ... When we go to the biggest race of the year, the Kentucky Derby, I think they should have had an agreement with Kalshi, and they should have had Kalshi pay them for advertising, but that’s just my opinion.

Todd: Brent, this is the history of business, not just the history of this. I’ve worked for a couple of companies who are more worried about protecting old revenue, cannibalizing something in their business. They wouldn’t do something because they thought, oh, we’re gonna harm this, or we need to protect our traditional ways only to get lapped by new competition. This is a lesson in business, and I am with you. I have no idea with the horse-racing industry, and they’re like this in every state. They did this in Florida, and they try to fight so hard for certain protections that they just have become irrelevant in the entire gaming industry down there. I just feel like there’s a lot of old thinking in the horse-racing world. Look, they’re going to get left behind. They may get left behind anyway. Why did we first start racing horses? Because we all rode horses, right? And the further away we go from being actual humans that used horses for transportation, the less interested younger and younger generations are going to be.

This just came up. Bill Simmons said the exact same thing in his conversation with David Letterman. It’s not like this is a secret, right?

Todd: I don’t know the horses very well, but like any sports fan and any gambler, I get into the Triple Crown. I’m all in, right? There were all these restrictions on whether you could place a bet. I couldn’t simply place a bet on multiple (sports-betting) apps that I have because of the different carve-out deals that the different horse-racing authorities have in different states. I think they missed out on a huge opportunity. You outlined it, Brent, and they’re going to get left behind.

Musburger: Yeah, and they’re making a huge mistake.

Todd: And by the way, never mind the calendar issue. My gosh, come on. You know, I live in the DMV right here in D.C. I want the Preakness to be relevant. It’s fun going to a Preakness. I’ve never been to a Kentucky Derby, but a Preakness, it’s just a lot of fun. It’s a great tradition around here. Move the race a week. Put the calendar in such a way that you can actually promote your sport, and instead, they’re fighting. ‘We can’t do this, because we’ve got to do it at this track, and we have to do it in this window.’ Stop fighting the past, horse-racing world.

Musburger: Obviously they have to make a change to the schedule, simply because now we’ve had the last two Kentucky Derby winners who have skipped the Preakness, and that brings about a downer on the second leg of the Triple Crown. I would suggest that they do the Triple Crown and go to a grand slam. The first Saturday in May is obviously when we’re going to run the Kentucky Derby. That should not change. ... What they need to do now is to build off of that. I would take the first Saturday in June, and I would say that’s Preakness day. That eliminates any chance that the owner of the Derby winner is not going to be able to go because he wants his horse to rest more. I would move to the Belmont for the first Saturday in July. Then for the grand slam, we’re going up to Saratoga for the Travers, and we’re going to go the first Saturday in August. I would take the first Saturday, and I would build off of it. I know there’s a lot of dates in there that have to be tinkered with and things like that, but I think the horse-racing industry must especially move to save the Preakness, so I absolutely agree with Chuck. ... Now obviously, Kentucky and New York and Maryland, they’re going to have to get together to agree with something like this, and then they need to make a deal with the Polymarkets of the world and go forward.

Todd: Why don’t they follow the lead of golf? Golf realized that nobody was watching the PGA Championship. They said, "You know what? Our calendar’s kind of messed up. We’re just going to redo the calendar." I love their calendar now. I think they’ve done their four majors perfectly. April is The Masters. Just like the Kentucky Derby, you don’t touch the Masters. You don’t touch the Kentucky Derby. But May now is the PGA, June is the U.S. Open, and July is the British Open. It’s a very logical thing. And golf? You talk about a sport that’s obsessed with its traditions. Well, they figured it out.

Musburger: Come on, horse racing. Chuck is so right. ... Moving that PGA up into May was fantastic.

Chuck, you’ve covered government bureaucracy. Horse-racing bureaucracy may be even more layered than your typical government bureaucracy.

Todd: Because government’s involved.

How do we get them together? Nobody has figured that out yet.

Todd: That’s the problem is that you actually have a lot of layers of government involved in horse racing, right? You’ll have your state authorities. ... I think that’s been the problem, is that they’re not all on the same page. It may be that the Maryland authorities and the folks that run the Preakness are on the same page, but then they’re not on the same page with the Belmont folks and the Kentucky Derby folks. It certainly seems to me from a business point of view here that as much as we love the traditions and all this, if you want this to survive and thrive, you’ve got to adapt or die. Ask boxing. Who wants to become boxing? I don’t want to see horse racing become boxing. I miss boxing the way it was. It’s still around, but you’ve got to work harder for it, and you’ve got to find different places to find it the way it used to be. I’d hate to see horse racing become more niche the way boxing’s become.

Musburger: My other criticism of the Kentucky Derby is they’ve got too many horses in a field. ... They should talk about 12, 14. I’d be happy with that. When you go back and look at the start of this year’s Kentucky Derby, it is amazing to me that my 1 horse, Renegade, even stayed competitive at the top of the stretch. ... I just think they’ve got too many, but that’s just me. I had a saver on it. I liked Renegade ever since the Arkansas Derby, and I certainly like Renegade in the Belmont.

Todd: I was on Chief Wallabee. He ended up fourth, and I felt pretty good as the comeback was happening, I thought, oh, my God. I had Renegade, Chief Wallabee and Emerging Market. I did that as a box and didn’t hit but felt like I was going to come close. On all of these Triple Crown races, because I don’t know enough, I always take usually the second or the third favorite. I never want to take the favorite, because I assume what Brent just said. Everybody’s just going to come in and put something on the favorite. Then do a tiny bit of research and find the long shot that is being undervalued, which is why I bet Emerging Market. I didn’t do the Preakness. Part of it was I was traveling.

Who do you use, Chuck, as far as your advice?

Todd: Besides (Andrew) Beyer, who usually does his annual visit to Mr. Kornheiser, of course.

He hit the Preakness. He had Napoleon Solo.

Todd: You’ve got to give him his due. Look, I usually read VSiN and the Action Network. I’m on all the different gaming trades now. In some ways there’s better reporting on gaming these days than there is on actual regular sports.

Brent, who do you go to?

I admire Daily Racing Form. An old horseman way back in the day, speaking of the Kentucky Derby, he gave me a way to bet the tri. Actually, I did it with the biggest ticket I ever cashed once at Louisville. He said, "Brent, isolate one horse that you think has the best chance of finishing in the money, and then make him a single win, single place, single show." And he said, "Take five or six other horses and (wheel) them in those positions, too." And it’s kind of an interesting way to bet a big field like a Derby.

Todd: Boy, that sounds so smart. I never do parlays for the same reason. It’s not worth the juice, so it’s not worth the squeeze on that one. But that makes a ton of sense, man. I’m stealing that. That’ll be my Belmont plan.

Musburger: Yeah, exactly. I was just thinking the same thing. So the Belmont, if they have a nine- or 10-horse field, maybe you want to isolate that one and then take three others.

I know both of you have interests in each other’s chosen fields. Here’s truth-serum time now. Last week you had the primary elections, and that same Tuesday night you had the Knicks coming back from 22 points down in the fourth quarter to force overtime and beat the Cavaliers. What were you two watching?

Musburger: Politics.

Todd: I had the best of both worlds. I’m working with a team that calls these elections now. Decision Desk HQ. I hope you check them out. They’re very fast, very accurate. Anyway, we do a live stream for these election nights. We ended it at 9:30, because frankly, we had called all the main races. Everything had been called, and no offense to my friends in Idaho and Oregon, but I wasn’t staying up for the livestream to do that. I come in right at the fourth quarter. I may or may not have been holding an under ticket and feeling really good. Until that sucker went into overtime.