Boycott
One Way to Spin
The weather* continued to hammer Santa Anita on Monday, with total handle for the second day of the meet totaling $5,529,285, down 34.5% from the $8,443,017 taken in on the second day of last year’s meet. For the first two days of the meet, total handle is down 26.2% compared to last year. “There is no way to spin this,” Bill Christine quotes bettor Andy Assaro saying of the opening day decline. I’m a bit disappointed Santa Anita didn’t even try to give the numbers a positive gloss. (Were they not paying attention to Del Mar and NYRA this past summer?) After all, the first two days last year fell on Saturday (usually the best day of the week for handle anywhere) and Sunday, this year on Sunday and Monday. Comparing opening day Sunday 2010 to second day Sunday 2009 yields an increase of 38.7% in handle. Comparing the first two days this meet to Sunday and Monday 2009 delivers an increase of 22.2% in handle. A brazen publicist could really run with those percentages.
*There is no horseplayers’ boycott, comrades. In fairness, though, Monday was a snow day for much of the frozen northeast, with no simulcasting at several tracks, and no betting through NYRA’s online or telephone services. [Also, left out above, comparing Monday 2010 to Monday 2009 shows a modest decline of 2.3% in handle. That’s with one additional race on the card.]
11:20 AM Addendum: Here’s a question: How much of Santa Anita’s opening weekend interstate handle did NYC OTB account for in 2009?
Speed Up, Handle Down
So, was the horseplayers’ boycott a success before it even began? I was among those who thought that anticipation for the first day of racing at Santa Anita in eight months and pent-up dirt demand would lead to a surge in opening day handle. That’s not what happened. From every angle (opening day last year, the last opening day on Sunday, the last opening day with a dirt track), handle was down across the board. Compared to 2009, attendance was off 4% (from 35,292 to 34,268), on-track handle down 15% (from $4,531,236 to $3,851,594) and total handle down 21.5% (from $14,913,953 to $11,707,276). Several factors surely affected the numbers: The track ran nine races this year, 10 in 2009; all the turf races were moved to the main track; there was no handle from now-closed NYC OTB; rain in California and snow on the East Coast may have kept some bettors away. But it also seems likely that a notable percentage of players held back bets, whether to protest the takeout increase or to watch how the reconstructed surface performed.
Santa Anita gave a brave spin to the day’s numbers, issuing a press release in which track president George Haines said, “I think it’s safe to say that we again demonstrated in a very profound way that our fans will continue to support Santa Anita in a big way on our big days. We’re very hopeful we can build on the momentum we generated today and carry it through the entire meet.” That might be difficult, if there are too many cards like Wednesday’s nine-race 61-horse line-up ahead. For comparison, Tampa drew 100+.
The new track looked like the Santa Anita dirt of old on Sunday, with California speed back in style and favorites winning four of nine races (and finishing in the money in eight of nine). “Southern California racing has been a soap opera the past few years,” writes Jay Privman. “Sunday made it feel even more so, as if the past three years at Santa Anita, under a controversial synthetic surface, had merely been a dream.” Trainer Bob Baffert, who might be more inclined to call the past three years a nightmare, was in the winner’s circle after the fourth race, posing next to a freakishly fast 2-year-old named The Factor. “If he’d have lost today, I would have quit training,” said Baffert. Going gate-to-wire, as did the winners of all three six furlong races on the card, The Factor set a new track record of 1:06.98 for the distance while winning a maiden special by 8 1/4 lengths as the 3-2 favorite, his time good for a Beyer speed figure of 102. Switch, the first of trainer John Sadler’s three stakes winners on the day, bested the stakes time of 1:20.45 posted by Mamselle Bebette in 1993 by winning the G1 La Brea Stakes in 1:20.33. Twirling Candy, finishing a nose in front of Smiling Tiger, broke the track record of 1:20 for seven furlongs set by Spectacular Bid in 1980 by winning the G1 Malibu Stakes in 1:19.70. That the Bid’s record was in danger was anticipated early in the day, and not with much joy. “I kind of have a problem with that,” said one of the house handicappers on the track’s feed, talking about Santa Anita’s decision to restore the old dirt track records, ignoring the differences in the surfaces and the synthetic interlude, and I kind of agreed. Twirling Candy is no Spectacular Bid, even if he — like Sir Beaufort winner Sidney’s Candy — is now an Omnisurface Star.
1:45 PM Addendum: Jay Hovdey posts re: Sunday’s lickety-splits: “Meanwhile, up in his booth at the top of the stretch, track superintendent Rich Tedesco was banging his head against the desktop, knowing full well that too fast is just plain too fast when it comes to protecting the frail infrastructure of the Thoroughbred racehorse from his own natural instincts to flee. He also knows that horses like Spectacular Bid don’t come along every 30 years.”
Conflict of Interest
Will dirt’s return trump horseplayers’ takeout rage when Santa Anita opens?
Bill Finley, writing in support of an organized players’ boycott, notes:
Santa Anita might actually get off to a good start. A lot of bettors are excited about the return to dirt and that might yield an increase in handle at the outset. But what will eventually happen is what always happens when racetracks raise the take.
Via Bill Christine, Bruno de Julio certainly thinks dirt will win out:
“Dirt is in,” he says, “the track is doing massive marketing on the return to dirt, and do y’ll [sic] think this is going to deter the player from sending [money] in with both hands on opening day? … This boycott is a delusional cause. It won’t happen.”
Steve Davidowitz believes boycotters are making a tactical mistake:
[The boycott] will not work. Because the handle may not be negatively impacted by anything anytime soon given that southern California players have wanted to handicap and play races on dirt for too long to suddenly abandon such plans.
For Davidowitz, the problem is timing; I see it as one of focus. Instead of a single, easily promoted action that harnesses bettor enthusiasm for California dirt and demonstrates price sensitivity, the Players’ Boycott site offers several ways to show support for the cause, ranging from total withdrawal to offshore wagering (?!) — which will add up to no measurable impact.
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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