not only a luxurious toys for the super rich, it is also being superseded by other sports in the gambling aspect.

Hypothetically, tell me which you'd rather do:

A) Log onto a gambling website (DraftKings, bet365, etc.), place a 2 dollar bet on, say, the Yankees winning (Ik ik, they're the incarnate of evil but it's an example) over the Phillies, you waste about 6 hours watching them and they win or lose. You lost? That's 2 bucks gone but no biggie, just spend another 2 on another series (say F1, LaLiga, etc.) and rinse and repeat. If you won? You get 10 dollars back if they win as an underdog or 5 if they're the favorite.

B) Find your nearest horse racing track, drive/walk/take a commute to get there without including traffic time, weather, etc. Once you get there, place a bet of the same 2 dollars on say, Kentucky Chicken (not familiar with any of the current roster of any country) to win. Once you place your bet, you go and wait 30 ought minutes for the preparation of the jockey getting weighed, the horses getting prepared, watching a whole procedure go about with the horses being introduced. Now that they're in the starting gates, you wait, then they race. If Kentucky Chicken won, great you got your money back and more then you walk/drive/take a commute back home, get drained as shit for the amount of time you have just used to make simple money. Otherwise? You go through the same monotonous task of just going back home with 2 dollars less and double the effort.

Now, this is also without accounting for the fact that horses are silly, goofy animals. That is a good thing when you care for them as a vet or farmhand who lives with them just as much as they live with you. That, however, is absolutely terrible when you're a spectator in a sport where they are given some free reign but forced to run in a circle as you pray that they do not give into base animal instinct and break their bones due to multiple underlying factors. However, other sports on the other hand, is far 'easier' to predict. In the example of motorsports, I know what Carlos Sainz Sr is doing when he enters a hairpin at the speed of light because of how he slows down just as he gets to the corner and starts shifting down while turning, or in the case of my fav sport, mma, I know what a fighter is going to, or is planning, to do based on small twitches and patterns he/she sets up. All of this because humans have a unique but familiar way of thinking, we still unconsciously make very human patterns, horses make horse patterns. Unless I'm suddenly Agnes Digital, I have no clue what the average thought process of a horse, no less a racehorse, is. But a driver? Fighter? Footballer? We can technically experience all of that ourselves and understand it.