Handle
California Jam
Why gadfly horse owner Jerry Jamgotchian is coming back to California:
… Jamgotchian said he feels California is a better place to race now because the “purse structure is higher” and smaller stakes fields increase the chances of his horses acquiring black-type than, for example, at Gulfstream Park.
“There are less horses in California to compete against. The new dirt track at Santa Anita is also an impetus,” he said.
At least someone sees a silver lining in the horse shortage plaguing SoCal. More than 2,400 horses stabled at Santa Anita and Hollywood, and Saturday’s Sham Stakes, the first of the track’s Kentucky Derby preps, only draws five — all maiden winners, but for Clubhouse Ride. What is really going on? Foolish Pleasure would like to know:
Can anyone explain exactly what is the real story behind California’s so-called “horse shortage� Reading Steve Andersen’s piece in the DRF this morning it struck me once again that all we ever hear out of that state in recent years is excuses why they can’t fill cards.
Field size, reports Blood-Horse in an article on the horseplayers’ boycott of California, “is averaging 7.69 horses per race, down from 7.91 from the same period last year.” That’s with one fewer day of racing a week.
I’m not sure how much longer the higher purses drawing Jamgotchian will be around, if the boycott succeeds. It does seem to be attracting attention. It also may be making a noticeable impact. Thursday was the first official day of the action, and compared to the previous Thursday, handle was down 15.26% (from $5,454,129 to $4,621,858), despite steady attendance, the same number of races, and a difference of five starters. The decline was striking, after a couple weeks in which figures were down, but difficult to interpret.
Five for the Sham, but eight for Sunday’s El Encino Stakes, which features certain 3-year-old filly champion Blind Luck making her first start of the year. She’ll be running against the new dirt’s speed-favoring profile and front-runners Champagne d’Oro (the other G1 winner in the field) and trainer Bob Baffert’s Always a Princess, coming off a fourth in last month’s La Brea Stakes.
Reading the Numbers
Nick Kling on the first 11 days of racing at Santa Anita:
Through Sunday, on-track attendance at Santa Anita is down 9 percent. Total all-source handle is down $11.5 million, a decline of 13.4 percent.
On-track and intra-state (within California) handle is down 7.8 and 6.7 percent, respectively. The most significant loss is in inter-state wagering, which has fallen 19 percent.
The trend: After the first seven days of racing at Santa Anita, average handle was down 18%, out-of-state handle down 21.9% over the previous year. After the first two days, total handle was down 26.2%, out-of-state down 32.3%.
Things are going great at Gulfstream: Five days in, total handle is up 17.2%.
Odds and Ends
Blind Luck is raring to go for the El Encino Stakes next Sunday. She worked seven furlongs on Santa Anita on Friday in 1:25.20 and then galloped out another seven furlongs. “For a slightly built filly, she has loads of energy,” observed Jay Privman. On Sunday, it was The Factor flying over the Santa Anita dirt, going five furlongs in :58 flat. “He went a little too fast — he got away from the rider,” said trainer Bob Baffert of the 3-year-old colt.
Culture clash at the Big A? “I feel like I’m in an OTB! I feel like I’m in an OTB!,” LATG overhears an Aqueduct patron telling a security guard. Friday was the one month anniversary of NYC OTB’s closure. Funny, but the parlors already seem like something out of the far past, which I suppose says something about how removed from the mainstream life of the city they had become. (If you’d like to remember days at the OTB, here’s an unexpectedly poignant little video that captures the operation’s waning hours.) While there are some pains as the new element is absorbed into the track scene, NYRA’s efforts to attract displaced OTB bettors are paying off with higher ontrack handle and 2,434 new NYRA Rewards customers since December 8. On Saturday, the new Belmont Café took in a high point $137,889 in wagers from 325 players. “It just goes to show you that simple accommodations — a clean bathroom and a decent place to eat — can go a long way,” writes Jerry Bossert. There’s a still a significant shortfall in NYRA’s total handle, but the trend is positive.
So, the investigation into the l’affaire Life at Ten is ongoing, with the Office of the Inspector General in the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet being brought in “to have some independent review for certain aspects of it.” That’s KHRC executive director Lisa Underwood talking to Jennie Rees, who also reports that the KHRC has conducted 90 interviews regarding the Breeders’ Cup Distaff Ladies’ Classic fiasco. Ninety? Once this investigation concludes, how about another into what’s been a frustratingly opaque and slow process.
A New Year’s resolution particularly relevant to the above: “Protect the punter.”
Final handle numbers for 2010 were down 7.3% from 2009, to $11.4 billion from $12.3 billion. That’s the lowest annual total since 1995. “Obviously, we are losing bettors to other forms of gambling,” TRA executive vice president Chris Scherf tells Janet Patton. “We are in the midst of an unmanaged, market-driven contraction touching most aspects of the racing business.” Unmanaged is the key word, and nowhere is that more apparent right now that in the date dispute shaping up in southern Florida between Calder and Gulfstream. As for losing out to other games, sports bettors and poker players are pretty upfront about why they’re not paying much attention to racing.
Monday Notes
What a difference eight months can make: An email arrived over the weekend pointing to this DRF interview that appeared with then-new CHRB chairman Keith Brackpool in January 2010. Brackpool opposed the Los Alamitos takeout increase, telling Steve Andersen, “It’s a slippery slope … I don’t like it.” In September, after California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the law that included the statewide takeout increase that’s riled up horseplayers, Brackpool was quoted by the Blood-Horse as saying, “We offer in California the premier racing product on a year-round basis, but we were offering our first-class product at a discount price. We’re changing the pricing model.”
Whatever the reason for Brackpool’s shift in perspective, the board’s decision to accept higher takeout on exotic wagers so as to boost purses by $25-30 million seems to be backfiring just days into the Santa Anita meet. Ray Paulick beat me to the numbers: Wagering through the first seven days is down an average of 18% over last year’s winter meet; out-of-state handle is down 21.9%. One big bettor tells Pull the Pocket that he’s not playing California, and that others are either wagering less or looking elsewhere:
“Out of the guys who I have told you about before, two are just dabbling nickels and dimes at Santa Anita, one is betting much less, I have stopped cold turkey along with another. The last guy is looking for a new circuit to bet and tells me he has been studying for that. It’s unlikely he’ll come back, unless something changes there. The ones who are still betting obviously operate on very thin margins so if they see their day to day results dropping [e.g. with the higher takeout], I’m sure they’ll quit and just go for carryover pools and I’m pretty confident that will be the end result.”
Re: thin margins, Ed DeRosa has posted a chart clearly demonstrating how takeout affects bankrolls, and makes the point that it’s not only bettors harmed by raising takeout, but tracks. Short-term gains have long-term costs. One track that’s earning kudos for getting it right is Tampa Bay Downs, which actually out-handled Santa Anita last Wednesday and is posting double-digit gains daily. Tampa, which has had much success with its program for Churchill-pointing 3-year-olds over the past few years, may also draw the leading Kentucky Derby prospect this spring. Trainer Todd Pletcher is considering the March 12 Tampa Bay Derby for likely juvenile champion Uncle Mo, who’s about three weeks away from his first breeze of 2011.
1/4/2011 Addendum: Takeout math from Trackmaster, using a Pick 3 wager as an example. Originally posted last August, newly relevant.
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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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