FanDuel TV (formerly known as TVG) has begun winding down operations. While the network will cover racing in some capacity through at least November, its studio shows are concluding, and much of the staff, both on-air and behind the camera, will no longer be employed by the company after this weekend.

This comes at a time when much of racing is contracting. I’d be remiss not to mention the upcoming closure of Aqueduct, which runs its last card on Sunday, and the uncertainty surrounding Hawthorne, which will come down to a decision-making process that figures to progress considerably next month.

Having said that, I’ve never been to either track, so I’m not the person to go to for tributes to them. I worked for TVG and the network formerly known as HRTV (rebranded to TVG2 in 2015) for 3 1/2 years. Moving west to take that job gave me a fresh start when I desperately needed one. I grew up quite a bit, and because of the move, I met the woman I eventually married. In some parallel universe somewhere, where the reason I left TVG in May of 2017 (also, for whatever it’s worth, the same reason a LOT of other talented, passionate people left TVG) doesn’t exist or is neutralized, I’m still there, still doing work I’m proud of, and almost certainly staring down the barrel of unemployment at the end of this month.

Of the recent racing-related business casualties, this is the one I can speak at length about.

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First, and most importantly: There were people in horse racing who celebrated when FanDuel TV’s announcement came out earlier this year. Before we go any further, let me use this space to tell those people to take long walks off of short piers. Maybe you didn’t care for some aspects of FanDuel TV, TVG, or HRTV (and that’s your right; it comes with the territory), but I can say, with first-hand knowledge, that the networks employed more passionate horse racing people than any other outlet in the business. Those people have families, and they’re now looking for jobs. If you take joy in that, like the person in the below screenshot did, there’s a special place in hell waiting for you.

Now that that’s out of the way…

Sports betting content started to appear on what was then TVG in 2018 before the channel rebranded to FanDuel TV in 2022 (TVG2 was then rebranded for a second time, to FanDuel Racing). Some have said the writing was on the wall at that point, but I’m not sold. Rebrands aren’t cheap, this came with the development of a new FanDuel Racing website and app, and while the arrival of sports-focused programming hosted by the likes of Kay Adams and Michelle Beadle certainly carried additional costs, it’s not like this stopped them from airing horse races. I’m not saying parent company Flutter Entertainment saw horse racing as a cash cow when states began legalizing sports betting and online casinos, but acting as though the sport was a red-headed stepchild seems a bit misleading given the evidence.

I’ve also seen takes from some who have decided FanDuel TV’s demise has to do with the horse racing industry at large struggling. There’s a bit of merit to this given the data we have on hand (Ed DeRosa’s weekly tweets with numbers from tracks across the country are required viewing), but it’s also not fully correct, either. From what I’ve been able to dig up, FanDuel TV was hiring right up until this year’s announcement of bad news. That’s not the sign of a business that isn’t supported, nor one where a multi-billion-dollar company has said, “freeze spending, something’s coming.”

(On a somewhat-related note, I’ve also seen a few takes in the vein of, “FanDuel TV actively hurt horse racing.” While I’m not as angry about this take as the one I mentioned at the outset, this is also wrong. Like or dislike whatever programming you want, and pick nits about talent tickets and betting philosophies as much as you want, but having worked there and seen the numbers, hard data shows enhanced FanDuel TV coverage, and enhanced TVG and HRTV coverage before that, actively helped handle and revenue at a number of different tracks. If you didn’t care for certain hosts or content, that’s all well and good, but don’t say your preferences tell one story when data actively refutes it.)

I don’t have anything that would qualify as insider knowledge. I can only read the same tea leaves as everybody else, and the ones I’m seeing (mainly from Flutter Entertainment’s stock price) tell a defined story: As much as this will impact horse racing, and as painful as it is for so many good people within horse racing, this probably wasn’t entirely (maybe even not “mostly”) a horse racing decision.

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Nearly 10 years after I left the TVG offices in west Los Angeles for the last time, I’m still proud of the work I did. We were faster at getting major race replays to YouTube than several major racing jurisdictions (to the point where one of them actively complained), and subscriptions to the YouTube channel I managed nearly tripled between when I started at TVG and when I was done. My digital-first content was some of the first of its kind in the industry, from “TVG Extra” track-centric broadcasts to my old “Pre-Game Periscope” show, back when that platform was a thing.

That didn’t come without some internal pushback (including at least one person referring to the space I recorded/broadcast from as the Wackycapsule; no time like the present to identify yourself, whoever you are!), but I wasn’t trying to make anything anyone else did worse or less meaningful. I was trying to get my own seat at the table, and given content everyone else in the space is now doing a decade later (from Twitter Spaces and podcasts to YouTube videos and social media hits), I’d say I was ahead of the game.

My heart breaks for the people I met when I was there. Contrary to what you might see from trolls on Twitter, 99.9% of them are good, solid people who give a damn about this game. We need people like that doing more in this industry, not less, and anything that doesn’t go in that direction is a terrible thing.

Outcry within the horse racing industry has been loud. People are justifiably sad as FanDuel TV personalities work their last shifts and thank those behind the scenes, people the average horseplayer doesn’t know but whose efforts have been considerable over the years.

FanDuel TV will still exist, to a point, for the next several months. Anchor, former colleague, and “friend who once roasted a bachelor party I attended at Disney World” Mike Joyce took to Instagram Friday and reminded followers that the network will still have remote broadcasts at Los Alamitos, Del Mar, and Keeneland through most of November. However, betting handle, which is already going the wrong way, figures to face another challenge, especially at smaller tracks FanDuel TV will no longer spotlight.

There are other media outlets within the game, of course. The NYRA/FOX Sports broadcasts include many former FanDuel TV and TVG employees, both on-air and behind the camera, and they do a great job. Simulcast feeds will still be offered through the RTN network led by Roberts Communications Network and ADW’s like TwinSpires and, yes, FanDuel Racing. A new venture called The Horse Whisperer Network (helmed by Randy Sarf of LSU Stables) has hired a few ex-FDTV people, and while I hope they do well, any guesses I’d make about content they’re set to produce would be just that, guesses.

It sure seems like there just aren’t enough spots for all of the people affected by this business decision, though. 1/ST TV, for instance, was once marketed as the successor to HRTV, but with the exception of a handful of previews for individual races, their site’s content is predominantly videos of workouts. These are immensely valuable, yes, but the interviews and extensive insight of the previous Stronach Group-owned media entity are almost completely absent. Between tracks closing and the daily struggles of the media industry at large, some people who have made significant contributions to the game won’t be around anymore, at least in the short term.

If ever there was a time for the heavy hitters in this sport to come together and do something to prevent/end a crisis, this would be it. That brings me to one final thought: Everyone in the upper crust of the racing industry who has said anything about this, including people who are worth billions and billions of dollars, thinks this is a terrible development that will hurt the game in the long run.

So what’s stopping them from doing something about it?