Saratoga Spinning
The 2010 Saratoga meet closed on Monday and NYRA reported that, despite declines in on-track and all-sources handle and average daily attendance, figures exceeded expectations and even bucked industry trends:
Saratoga business outperformed the 7.3 percent decline in U.S. wagering year-to-date compared to 2009, and the 8.0 percent decline in wagering in August over the same month last year, as reported last Friday, September 3 by Equibase, the thoroughbred industry’s official statistics-gathering organization.
Except …
The raw economic figures for the industry, to which NYRA favorably compares Saratoga results, obscure positive trends. While wagering did decline 8.03% in August 2010 compared to August 2009, racedays declined further, by 13.23%. Average handle per raceday in August was actually up 5.6% ($1,985,538 over $1,873,229). Year over year, handle is stable, with wagering down 7.27% and racedays down 6.73%, yielding an average daily handle in 2010 that is off a mere .6% from 2009. Saratoga, however, ran 7.6% more races this year (see Dave Grening’s report in the Daily Racing Form on the Saratoga numbers), and its daily average all-sources handle was down 3.4%. Restrict the year-to-year numbers to the same 36 days, and things look a little better, with all-sources handle down 2.6% and races down 2.5%. Not bad, but not bucking.
