No Triple Crown this year.

[Viper]

Unlike most other high-profile sports, horse racing does not measure its commercial success by TV ratings or box-office receipts. Horse racing measures its commercial success by wagering handles (the industry term for gross wagering totals), both at the racetrack and off-track betting parlors. So, the sport's biggest problem isn't that it's too easy to cheat, or that it has a crazy-quilt of different rules in different states, or that too many of its horses are getting injured, or that it hasn't had a Triple Crown winner in 34 years - it's that America's gamblers have, by and large, long since moved on to other games.

The growth of Indian casinos, state lotteries and (for a few years, before the Feds crushed it on "Black Friday") online poker over the last 20 years are what have killed thoroughbred racing in the US, not the lack of a Triple Crown winner. Casinos and lotteries aren't going away any time soon, and it's likely just a matter of time before online poker returns (legally this time) to the US. The horse racing industry has known this for years - which is why so many racetracks across the country have either converted, or are trying to convert, into so-called "racinos", or hybrid facilities with slot machines, poker rooms and/or other table games to supplement their racing handles.

I'll Have Another racing today and winning the Triple Crown wouldn't have changed any of that. If anything it would have had the same effect on horse racing that a Pacquiao vs. Mayweather fight would have on boxing - the sport would get its proverbial 15 minutes in the spotlight, then just continue to slip further and further into the fringes of both America's sports scene and its gambling scene, as people go back to their slot machines.