One group is taking the battle against anti-racing forces to their own backyard.
Racing haters such as Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi and others determined to shut down the sport have long dominated the social media landscape with their rhetoric.
But Kick Up For Racing founder Vicky Leonard has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight for racing across various forms of media.
Kick Up For Racing has already annoyed the anti-racing brigade. Leonard welcomed every interaction with the likes of Faruqi and her followers.
“It’s been great when they have been calling us out because it actually brings attention to social algorithms to actually put our content in front of their followers,” Leonard said.
Leonard said the idea behind Kick Up For Racing grew out of chats with her young staff members at her Sydney-based marketing company, who had to deal with backlash from friends and family for working in racing.
Anti-racing protesters accost punters heading into racetracks all around Australia on big days with the biggest Victorian protests occurring at Warrnambool on Grand Annual Steeplechase day and at Flemington on Melbourne Cup Day.
Leonard said vendors and buyers also had to deal with protesters on every day of the Magic Millions yearling sale.
Leonard said using peer-reviewed veterinary and other academic information was the best way to refute anti-racing statements, which are usually based on incorrect data.
Kick Up For Racing provides scientifically approved information in various forms to give pro-racing advocates the chance to quickly and easily disprove the anti-racing propaganda.
“We’ve gone heavy on getting veterinary papers and veterinary journals,” Leonard said.
“We want peer-reviewed journals because they have gone through tough academic scrutiny.
“There’s no point just jumping on material that has been paid for through a conflict of interest.’
While Leonard has absorbed the costs of running Kick Up For Racing herself, she was looking to expand the organisation with the help of sponsorship from the big players in the industry.
Leonard’s vision is to continue taking the information battle to the social media space through various forms of content from simple countering of anti-racing misinformation to holding workshops to prove racing’s value.
“Up until now, the activists have had free rein of it and there’s actually been no response with the accurate truth,” she said.
“I think a lot of them have never been challenged, which is part of the problem.
“At the moment, we have let them come in and take over the social space and a lot of the rebuttal has been a bit more angry or roasting them to get a response rather than going back with actual facts.”
Leonard hoped to have a small army of workers on the ground at Flemington on Melbourne Cup Day handing out material with information about the welfare of horses to convince the once-a-year viewers that the sport is always working to improve.
“We’ll have a team of 20 working on social media, a team of 20 to 50 on the ground handing out flyers and chatting to people,” Leonard said.
“We also want to be feeding back the information we’re getting to the Principal Racing Authorities and talking about ways we can improve.
“We don’t want to be saying it’s all beautiful and rosy in areas where it’s not. We want to be active and get involved in helping things improve.”
Potential sponsors can head to www.sustainableactionforracing.com to view Kick Up For Racing’s plans for its next phase of action.
Link to the original article here.
This article was written by Brad Waters for The Daily Telegraph Australia.