Singapore’s horse racing scene has shrunken over the past 2 decades attributed from the rise of local casinos, strict government policies, decline in audience compared to its peak in 1990s, and higher operating cost but nonetheless still a multi billion industry in Singapore with so much more potential. So technically if we are able to remove all the mentioned challenges, the horse racing industry may be able to make a comeback.

The Singapore Turf Club established in 1842 is Singapore’s one and only horse racing club that have been driving the equine industry here. In recent news the turf club is trying to open up to the public and plans to transform the turf club image to gain more interest from the public of all generations across to reinvigorate the equine industry in Singapore.

Ushering in to the digital age now and in the future, one of the things they can consider is to use blockchain technology to aid them on their quest to achieve their goals. How is blockchain beneficial for the horse racing industry?

Firstly it could mitigate operating costs and bolster efficiency and speed, the traditional operation for all industries in the olden days starts from pen and paper which is time consuming and vulnerable to human error. Transactions such as horse buying or placing games and investment can be done instantly and accurately, by sculpting and dedicating an automatic process with blockchains.

Secondly a much greater transparency on information and history with regards to any transactions involved. As blockchain is a type of ledger, all stakeholders are shared with the same info and history; this shared info can only be updated with all stakeholders’ consensus. One can expect a full history till the extent of the horse’s origin and movements of the horse like injuries or visit to vets so on and so forth, when they are considering purchasing it without the fear of manipulated information. Accurate and precise past race results can also be easily retrieved.

Lastly, enhanced security on information. As we venture into the digital age, there are more reports and cases of cyber attack and information theft online. Transactions and information are encrypted and linked to the previous transaction, this move together with the fact that information is stored across a network of computers instead of on a single server, makes it extremely difficult for hackers to compromise the transaction and information data.

As a matter of fact, such innovative efforts and platform to integrate horse racing with blockchain technology has already been done by RacingLand (www.racingland.com). Their most recent feat is signing an official strategic partnership with the korea horse industry council in Jan 2019 to develop korea’s equine market, with their recent solution (and many more to come) of a secured and transparent platform that is easily accessible to all buyers, sellers and traders of horses, that would also mean that existing woes that the Korean horse enthusiasts faces such as horse buying transactions and horse breed histories issues regarding their data being manipulated will be eradicated all at once. The international connection and exposure RacingLand can offer is limitless through their platform as more and more horse councils globally are beginning to open up to talks about reforming and create a change in the equine industry to spur them up from the stagnated plateau.

When we talked about horses, we linked it back to the horse racing games too. Dice (www.dice.one) is the largest social gaming platform on EOS (www.eos.io) blockchain. Users can play real time games like Baccarat. They can also earn DICE tokens from playing, and then get dividends from staking. So far, we have not seen any horse racing games on such platform. This will be a good method to tap on existing platforms who already have the traffic flow and strong fan base.

Perhaps utilizing blockchain platforms like RacingLand together with EOS Dice as the backbone and core of operations for the Singapore Turf Club is feasible, given that they are on the same line for growth and passion in the industry they can open up some dialog and forge a partnership along the way. And for sure along with the Turf club’s continuous physical efforts on public activities can help to bring back the glorious heydays of Singapore’s equine industry.