Horse racing has been around for nearly 400 years, but the sport is going through a revolution right now, an overhaul that’s delightfully disguised as a party.
The Sport of Kings typically embraces change at a languid pace and probably feels it can afford to progress in its own good time, possessing a steeped set of traditions few other sports can begin to match.
Yet upheaval is currently coursing — and rapidly — through the thoroughbred game at its uppermost levels, a shift where the new royalty now wears baseball caps and clutches fractional shares, and screams themselves hoarse (pun intended) for their, um, horse.
As the 148th Preakness Stakes awaits Saturday, the favorite (and the winner of the Kentucky Derby two weeks ago) is an equine athlete not owned, as is common, by an oil-rich prince, a Texan business magnate or a member of a blue-blood family.
To be fair, any of those stereotypes might have also invested in Mage, who came from behind to win at Churchill Downs by a length, but if they did so it was along with hundreds of others, on the app of a crowd-sourcing platform named Commonwealth.
“We have literally all types,” Commonwealth CEO and co-founder Brian Doxtator told me in a phone conversation this week. Among those that invested in the company’s offering on Mage is an NFL general manager, some former English Premier League soccer stars, a handful of social influencers, plus a bunch of regular Joes and Josephines, many of them having, ahem, ponied up no more than $50 for partial ownership.
Commonwealth owns 25 percent of the horse with the rest mostly spread between its trainers and a blood stock agent.
When Mage, left, crossed the finish line to win the 149th Kentucky Derby, it made many small-time investors the owner of a Triple Crown champion.
Doxtator built his business through hard work, tireless reading and refinement of his business model, plus a necessary smattering of good fortune and some long nights blinking before a laptop. That aside, he’s also having the time of his life giving elite racing a whole different look.
Commonwealth’s community of loyalists are turning races where the group’s horses are involved into social gatherings. There were more than 30 Mage-themed watch parties across the country for the Derby and more than 100 investors at the race itself, most wearing Mage caps, and creating a verified record for the greatest number of people in the Churchill Downs winner’s circle in the track’s 148-year history.
“They just let them through … in those wild moments after the win, if you were wearing a Mage hat, that was like an entry ticket into the winner’s circle, one of the most hallowed places in the sport,” said Doxtator, whose celebration of leaping onto the rail and bellowing with delight flashed across the internet at a speed greater than even Mage’s thundering hooves.
Mage moved to a 4-5 favorite Friday when second choice First Mission was scratched. The Bob Baffert-trained National Treasure is 3-1. Another win and two-thirds of the Triple Crown will be complete for Mage, and the colt would head to the Belmont on June 10 (coverage begins at 4 p.m. ET on FOX) under a glaring spotlight and with history beckoning.
If you wanted to celebrate with jockey Javier Castellano in the winner’s circle at Churchill Downs, all you needed was a Mage hat to be admitted.
Yet the investors have already made out nicely, with payouts of around $125-$130 for each $50 share so far, plus a rise in the value of those stakes to a conservative estimate of $600-$700 each.
Competition will be stiff Saturday. Mage was a +1500 long shot at the Derby, having won just once in three starts, before being expertly guided down the stretch by veteran jockey Javier Castellano.
Whatever happens now, the greatest victory might already have been won. The average Commonwealth owner is 36 years old and is as likely to be a construction worker as a former Ivy Leaguer. Commonwealth tries to get as many of its members to races as possible and one pair even began dating after meeting at Mage’s first-ever race, hitting it off over an afternoon of wagering. Winning the Kentucky Derby together? Yeah, that’s quite a courtship.
Tapping into a youthful, tech-savvy demographic can be extremely beneficial for horse racing. Doxtator, a tech entrepreneur who partnered with childhood friend and racing expert Chase Chamberlin to launch Commonwealth in 2018, is happy to be part of the movement.
More offerings are coming, in golf and other individual disciplines where prize money is given after each event and therefore lend themselves neatly to fractional ownership. Graduating into typical American team sports, where a player’s “value” could go up based off their contract, is also an option for the future.
As for now, it is hectic in Doxtator’s world. After our call, he was boarding a red-eye flight to Baltimore and arriving at the iconic Pimlico track, where suddenly everyone knows who he is.
In some ways, he’s special there now, because he can say he’s the owner of the Derby winner, and racing gives unique status to those in that category.
And in some ways he’ll be just another face, in a crowd of people who can all claim the same thing, however much or little they invested. Which, of course, is the entire point.
