Win, Place, Profit: How To Earn Income on Digital Horse Racing

A horse is a horse, of course, of course, unless of course that horse is…

A digital asset in a crypto-based horseracing game that earns players thousands of dollars every month in income.

I’m talking about a video game called Photo Finish Live.

But unlike the Atari and Sega systems you and I grew up on, this is powered by cryptocurrencies. All you need to play is a digital horse (of course), a crypto wallet, and some cash to enter a race.

But you can also use Photo Finish Live to generate income—some passive, some active in that you have to spend hours researching horses and races if you want to succeed.

Every horse has a unique set of characteristics, called preferences and attributes. And every race has a unique set of conditions. To win, you have to match the best horse to the best race.

Players earn income through races… as well as breeding new digital horses (yep, that’s a thing).

Players can also sell horses for big gains and invest in virtual race tracks to profit from entry frees.

Though I know it sounds ludicrous to those of us who grew up losing quarters to PacMan, this is what passive income is going to look like in our brave new world. No matter where you live, as long as you have an internet connection, you can log into Photo Finish Live and potentially earn thousands of dollars every month… just by playing a video game.

Since the game’s launch in April, some players have already netted more than $100,000. One stable owner has earned— ready for this?—more than $900,000 collecting an in-house token the game is dispensing to every horse in every race through the end of April 2024.

And in the six weeks I’ve been playing, I’ve earned nearly $2,500 from six “digital horses” I’ve been racing, recouping nearly my entire investment of $2,861.

The legitimacy of the game reflects in the fac that Churchill Downs, the racetrack company behind the Kentucky Derby, owns a track in Photo Finish Live—and hosts a digital Derby there once a month.

To play, point your internet browser to Photofinish.live, open a free account, head to the Marketplace, and buy yourself a digital horse.

The cheapest racer today costs about $590. The cheapest foal, which will be eligible for racing in two months, is about $315.

Races run every few minutes at one of six online tracks. Some races are built for high-caliber horses, others are built for lesser-caliber horses.

Every horse has track preferences and internal attributes (like speed and stamina) that play into the race results. Races aren’t pre-determined but a function of track conditions, and the preferences and attributes of the horses in that race (there are nearly 3,000 horses in the game now.)

As I was writing this, one of my horses beat a 12-horse field in which eight horses had superior characteristics.

I paid $21.25 to enter that race, and won $115.25, a 442% return for 46 seconds of adrenaline.

Breed Digital Horses (Yes, Really)

My journey started with a single horse that cost me $209.87.

Today, I own 12 horses, and I am in the market for more—particularly a second filly.

That’s because big money comes from breeding high-quality horses and selling them on the Marketplace, where demand is brisk.

Males can breed up to 35 times per month, while female horses can breed one new foal per month.

Males earn a “stud fee” (a payment received for breeding with a female) of between $50 and nearly $2,000 a pop, while owners of females can either keep the offspring for their stable and race it, or sell the new horse for a nice profit.

Assuming a male horse did breed 35 times in a month, that’s passive income of $1,750 at the low end. That said, not every horse will breed as often as 35 times a month because, well, it might not have the attributes that attract someone willing to pay a stud fee.

Meanwhile, foals sell for into the thousands. So, paying a $50 to $100 stud fee each month means the owner of a female horse can generate some passive income, too.

Racing is the heart of the game, not breeding. But breeders are necessary to supply the game with new horses for a few reasons.

1. The growing popularity of digital horseracing means that new players are looking to buy horses, while existing stables are always looking to expand.
2. Each horse has its own unique traits and preferences, and as in real life, some horses are simply better than other. It’s the luck of the digital DNA draw. As such, players are always angling for better horses so that they have a better chance at winning races, where prize pools range from $20 to $200 per win.
3. Horses die. Most digital assets exist for time immemorial. But the horses in Photo Finish Live are born, live to race and breed, then die.

Every four weeks of real-world time equates to one full year—a season—in the game. Horses live between 20 and 25 seasons.

As such, players will own a particular horse for, at most, two real-world years. And then… taps.

That’s much like the real world of horse racing, and it imposes all kinds of strategic thinking into this game.

For instance, while a Photo Finish Live horse can race from ages two through eight, stable owners can opt to retire a horse at age three for breeding purposes. Given that newly bred foals regularly fetch $500 to more than $2,000, retiring a filly early can make financial sense.

I’ve not yet moved into breeding, but I purposefully bought a high-grade female foal for about $920.

I plan to race her for a season or two before retiring her to the breeding barn. The great benefit to having a female in your stable is that, while males have no guarantee of attracting stud fees, females are guaranteed to produce a foal if you pay a stud fee to another stable.

Meaning: Guaranteed income selling a new foal every month.

Given my filly’s ratings and her grade, and the stallions with which I’ll have her breed, I’ll be able to sell the offspring for several hundred dollars each—possibly close to $1,000, depending on the grade and racing preferences of the new foal.

This fits into my longer-term strategy: build a stable of females that can generate several new foals once a month, thereby generating many hundreds, if not a few thousand dollars in monthly income.

Earn Money Even When You Lose

In the past month, my six racers have won more than $1,500. I’ve spent more than $2,000, however, on race entry fees.

But there’s a method to that madness.

Through the end of April, Photo Finish Live is dispensing varying amounts of a cryptocurrency called $CROWN to every horse in every race.

$CROWN is the cryptocurrency that runs the game’s ecosystem, and which players can use to invest in individual race tracks. (Think of it as earning tokens at Chuck E. Cheese.)

As I write this, $CROWN is worth about $0.60 per token, and in many cases the $CROWN that players are collecting exceeds the cost of the race-entry fee. Depending on the race and the number of entrants, horses are collecting between about 10 and more than 200 $CROWN.

So, for the time being, you can profit from a race even if your horse finishes dead last.

When $CROWN distributions end later this spring, game strategy will focus more dogmatically on picking the right race for a particular horse—rather than picking less-than-ideal races just to collect the $CROWN.

That gets to the thrill of this game.

It’s highly addicting to research horses to determine their strengths, and to research various races to find the right one for you.

Add in the capacity to earn very real dollars managing a stable, racing, breeding, and selling digital horses, and you have a blockchain-based video game that offers an income stream anywhere you want to live in the world.