Billionaire Businessman And Rico Bosco Fan Mike Repole Showed Up On Pick Em And Proved Why He Needs To Be the Commissioner Of Horse Racing

Well, I wasn't expecting that. 

Like, I knew this week's Pick Em would be great. Mush mentioned on Picks Central that he had intel that there was no football talk at all for the first hour, and as he said, that usually means a great episode. He wasn't wrong. 

You should watch it. Immediately. But I was expecting I'd have that reaction. 

I wasn't expecting a significant, almost 10-minute segment on horse racing. But that's what we all got about an hour into the episode (58:06 for my timestamp people). And it was awesome. 

Mike Repole had joined the show to talk about his pal Rico. Repole basically launched an entire industry when he started Smartwater and Vitamin Water, which he eventually sold for billions. He continued that massive success with the sports drink BodyArmor. These days, he's the owner of NOBULL and co-owner of the UFL. 

He's also one of the biggest horse owners in the country, where, like his other businesses, he's won big. 

He's also spent big-  "$30 million a year on horses," he said on Pick Em, which brings us back to his Pick Em appearance. 

Because Dave is also a horse owner. And at one point, a daily horse bettor. But that has stopped since the CAW (Computer-Assisted Wagering) groups have been given preferential treatment over retail players like me. Just last weekend, we saw the damage these CAWs do to the wagering pools for horseplayers. 

"The entire fucking horse racing industry," Repole replied on Pick Em when Dave admitted he didn't know who Repole was fighting with within racing these days. 

That includes the Chairman of the Jockey Club, who had this terrible answer when asked about CAWs last week. The Jockey Club is supposedly a governing body in racing. To me, they're just a rich group of people who are guilty of allowing the sport to get to a place where Dave Portnoy is talking about not betting anymore, and Mike Repole is talking about not owning horses anymore. Embarassing. 

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Horse racing is a rudderless ship. You have different rules for each state, tracks that don't work together, a broken betting product, and public relations that are beyond embarrassing. I could go on. 

The sport needs someone like Repole as Commissioner. Or it needs him on a panel or group to help fix the sport. He's built MULTIPLE billion-dollar companies. Racing needs his help—a few things from his Pick' Em appearance stood out. 

Free information. As Repole points out, the Jockey Club owns Equibase, which keeps the stats and data for all of racing. They guard that data very well and make it hard to find for free. If you do want to bet on the horses, you'll have to pay for the past performances that tell you about each horse in each race that day. But bigger picture, there's a mountain of information that Equibase has that could help bettors build models, but you'll have to pay for it. "You know who pays for the data? The CAWs because they have the money. Not the little guy. Makes no fucking sense." The information should be free, and my guess is a successful business owner like Repole would find a way to make it happen. 

Peer-to-peer betting/games. Dave introduced the idea of a Daily Fantasy type of product, where the CAWs would not be able to play. DraftKings and DK Horse could pull this off. And with Dave's promotion, it could be a real player. "I'll go in there and meet DraftKings," Repole said about Dave's idea. The entire betting menu in racing needs an overhaul, and this would be a good start. Then go look at the fixed-odds wagering they allow in New Jersey. Or the idea of exchange betting, where I can offer a price on a horse in a race, and if you think it's fair, you take my bet. And it's me against you. We don't have that in the United States, and I'm not sure why. It's common in Australia, where the Melbourne Cup's "Call of the Card" is a wild event. 

Barstool Racing. Ideas like this are why we need Mike as Commissioner.  Repole proposed "Barstool Racing" events, where Barstool rents out a track and runs our own race card. The Breeders' Cup does that, why can't Barstool? Dave's eyes lit up when Repole mentioned a race for all grey horses. "Grey Cup," Dave repeats a couple of times. 

"So many people, 15 to 40, would show up for this shit," Repole commented. He's right. It would be a huge horse-racing party. And its success would be a giant middle finger to the stuffed shirts in the sport that have refused to embrace guys like Repole. And Dave. The Grey Cup could be the feature. Hold a handicapping tournament as part of the day. Stream all day from the track. Better yet, get Fox to broadcast it. 

And if it takes a 45-year-old bald man who loves racing to get on a horse to make it happen, I know a guy.

Not only is Repole against the old guard of horse racing, but he's also willing to battle with them. He's against the CAWs and wants to help the human bettor. He has new and innovative ideas. Most importantly, he loves racing. He cares about racing. Guy runs billion-dollar companies, and he's out here trying to fix a sport that desperately needs fixing. As a racing fan, it's refreshing. 

And his appearance on Pick Em was another example of why he should be racing's first commissioner. They'd be lucky to have him.