“YOU’VE BEEN PATIENTLY WAITING — AND NOW IT’S FINALLY HERE!”

You could have 500m guesses at what this breathless website copy is plugging and you would not get it.

The words accompany the release of the American Horse Council’s 2023 Equine Economic Impact Survey, which, as advertised, is “FINALLY HERE!”

Turns out, its super-excitable promo copy was actually quite merited:

• The equine industry added $177B to the US economy last year, up from $122 billion in 2017.
• It was responsible for ~2.2m jobs — not just the expected ones like trainers, vets, and farriers, but also truck drivers, nutritionists, chemists, and journalists.

A colt following

Horse enthusiasts sit at the core of the industry — they love their horses and they’ll spend wildly to acquire, care for, and pamper their galloping guys and gals.

• Analysis from The Horse magazine found its horse-owning respondents averaging $1.6k on monthly upkeep costs.
• Such figures skyrocket when maintaining horses for competitive purposes — say, racing or dressage — with some riders reportedly paying as much as $7.9k per month.

Of course, simply acquiring high-end horses is its own major expense: The 49 horses sold at last fall’s PSI Auction in Germany went for a combined $21.6m (or, a pricey ~$440.8k per horse average).

Bridled enthusiasm

Not everything is rosy in the horse business, of course:

• The total US horse population is in slight decline, with 6.6m in 2023, compared to 7.2m in 2017.
• Despite national doping and safety reforms, the racing industry remains in disarray — 624+ horses died on tracks in 2023, and 45 racetracks have closed since 2000. (Still, Americans placed $11.66B in bets last year.)

Also: “Horse’s ass,” “Screw you and the horse you rode in on,” and “Beating a dead horse.” The English lexicon is just plain rude to horses.

That’s a strange way to thank them for their multibillion-dollar contribution to society.

14%: Decline in US-produced scripted original series in 2023. There were still 516 adult TV shows made last year, so it’s not like there wasn’t a ton of new TV, but that number marks the biggest annual slump in 20+ years and follows a record high of 600 TV shows in 2022. The cause? Five months of strikes across Hollywood’s writers’ and actors’ guilds, plus budget cuts among streaming platforms.

47%: Share of Americans who say they’re “very” satisfied with their personal lives, per an annual Gallup survey. This is the third time since 2002 that fewer than 50% of Americans reported being less than very satisfied. Both previous times, in 2008 and 2011, came amid economic turmoil. Also, shoutout to the 9% of Americans who said they’re “very” dissatisfied. We’re rooting for you.

$650.88: How much Air Canada must pay in damages to a man who received wrong info from the airline’s chatbot. The bot told the man that bereavement fares could be claimed within 90 days of when the ticket was issued, which he learned was inaccurate when he submitted his grandmother’s death certificate less than a week later. Air Canada argued it couldn’t be held liable for the bot’s mistake, but to no avail.

50%: How much more persuasive you’ll be if you use the word “because” when making a request, per Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Apparently, an old Harvard University study demonstrated this by having people ask to cut in line at a Xerox machine. It didn’t matter if people gave a valid reason for skipping ahead or if they simply said it was “because” they — duh — needed to make copies. People were still 50% more likely to comply.