Horseplayers
Meetings Taken
Santa Anita and Del Mar executives recently met with horseplayers to discuss the January 1 takeout increase and other concerns. Art Wilson reports:
A HANA-backed boycott of California races is believed to be a factor in Santa Anita’s declining handle numbers this meet. HANA president Jeff Platt and the group’s California representative, Roger Way, met with Santa Anita president George Haines and Allen Gutterman, the track’s marketing director, on Sunday at Santa Anita and with Del Mar president Craig Fravel and marketing director Craig Dado on Monday … Aaron Vercruysse, hired recently by the Thoroughbred Owners of California to advise the group on betting matters, attended Sunday’s meeting …
The meetings are evidence that horseplayers, as represented by HANA, have gained the clout to compel conversation about customer issues. And while conversation isn’t action of the sort that’s going to end the players’ boycott, it is a start, one that went over well with Andy Asaro, a California horseplayer who attended both meetings. I talked with Asaro last night and he was positive about the discussions, describing the Santa Anita and Del Mar executives as “very interested” in the bettors’ perspective and open to making adjustments. He was less appreciative of the TOC, represented by Vercruysse. Although Asaro found Vercruysse pleasant and knowledgeable, he felt his presence was perfunctory. “He was there for the TOC to be able to say they talked to us,” said Asaro, suggesting that wasn’t enough. “They need to show goodwill.”
1/31/11 Addendum: HANA president Jeff Platt answers questions about the meetings. Noted: “However, I think there might be at least partial support at this point within track management to rescind the takeout increase. I say that because they reached out to us. They are looking for solutions.”
The Disconnect
From Matt Hegarty’s must-read on the state of the racing business:
But continuing to fatten purses is a solution that directly serves horsemen, not bettors. In a macroeconomic sense, it’s hard to argue that the $318 million in subsidies distributed to purses in 2009 made the game better. The U.S. foal crop cratered, the bloodstock market remained in its doldrums, and handle continued to decline at unprecedented rates.
Slots are the subject above, but unleavened takeout increases are similarly flawed. We’re seeing the results of a horsemen-first view in California now.
More SA Numbers
Santa Anita executives went on the offensive over the weekend, releasing figures showing the handle decline isn’t as bad as numbers bandied about in discussing a horseplayers’ boycott suggest. Art Wilson reports:
While cold, hard figures show Santa Anita’s overall handle was down 17 percent through Thursday, track officials contended Saturday their handle was down only 8 percent if you use “comparable days” rather than “calendar days.”
According to Santa Anita director of mutuels Randy Hartzell, it’s “not fair,” for instance, to compare opening weekend last year to the meet’s first two days this year (something I brought up, somewhat in jest, last month). Handle on comparable days totals $97,086,816 for 12 days of racing this year, said Hartzell, down from $105,784,974 last year; that compares to an overall total of $79,085,032 this year, down from $95,191,018 last year.
I asked Wilson the source of the article’s totals, and he replied that the numbers are derived from DRF data, not the CHRIMS data recently referred to by Scott Daruty on the Paulick Report, which gave rise to questions about how the track’s total handle figures are determined. “I am told by more than one person (Santa Anita and the CHRB) that according to CHRIMS daily average handle is only down about 8.2%,” wrote a California bettor seeking an explanation of the differences in an email I received this morning:
If that is true then Equibase and DRF are putting out false handle numbers to the public and have been for years…. How do DRF and Equibase come up with the handle numbers they disseminate? Can someone from Equibase and DRF respond to this please?
Good question. But — and I write this as someone who would also like to know how the figures are derived and their accuracy confirmed — it’s a tangent here. I mean, hey guys, you’re arguing about how much your handle is down. Your handle is down, at the same time that Tampa is booming and Gulfstream is reporting gains. Aqueduct isn’t up, but that’s because NYRA was especially hard hit by NYC OTB’s closure, and they’ve admirably met that challenge so far by treating it as an opportunity to cultivate new customers, take over the OTB TV channel, and get live streaming video on the NYRA Rewards site.
Santa Anita’s handle is down, and track executives are debating by how much? Instead of admitting that customers might have a point — that maybe the product is overpriced, or not all that enticing — and considering how they might respond positively to reverse the slide, they’d rather defend how they’re running the business. The way things are going, that’s right into the ground.
Saturday Notes
Oaklawn Park opens today. Trainer Larry Jones, refreshed by semi-retirement and recovered from aluminum poisoning, is back. So is Lady Giacamo, one of the first winners for her sire Giacomo and one of the first additions to my juvenile watchlist last year. After going 3-for-3 at Lone Star early in the summer, the filly was brought to Del Mar, where she didn’t race, and returned to the work tab at Remington in November. The six-furlong Dixie Belle Stakes will be her first start since winning the TTA Sales Futurity last June.
Square Eddie, returned to training after a year at stud, set a track record of 1:13.11 for 6 1/2 furlongs winning at Santa Anita on Friday. It’s just the latest record set over the new dirt track, prompting Brad Free to wonder, “when horses run as fast as they have been running this winter at Santa Anita, one has to ask again — at what expense?” I very much hope not at the expense of aggravating the physical issues that sent Square Eddie to the shed. “He had a high suspensory strain and I’ll be very interested to see how he looks in the morning — if he’s knocked out or body-sore,” said trainer Doug O’Neill after. “Hopefully we’ll find an empty feed tub and a bright, happy horse.”
The chipmunks are attacking! How could they not, when provoked like this? According to Santa Anita executive Scott Daruty, handle on Santa Anita was up 5% on the first official day of the horseplayers’ boycott, not down more than 15%. Numbers from the CHRIMS database — numbers not publicly available or reported by Equibase, DRF, or the California stewards, and therefore unverifiable — say so. I’m not a member of HANA, and even though I’ve bet less than $20 on Santa Anita since the meet started, I’m not boycotting. (Short fields dominated by speedballs and favorites bore me.) I’m an observer, and my interests lie in having access to accurate numbers and trying to understand what those numbers mean. If the track handle numbers reported on charts and treated as standard by every trade publication (including the one Daruty is speaking through) are inaccurate, then we have a bigger problem than trying to determine whether Thursday’s Santa Anita handle was up or down — the quality of handle data, as well as all reportage based on it, is compromised.
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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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