PARX cancels stakes races
 

https://www.drf.com/news/parx-cancel...-and-cotillion

This was pretty much a given. There is no window for them to run these races and they probably don’t have the money to fund the purses.

It was their decision to run only 3 days....
They average 2 mill in handle a day.....
Where is the money going...to the fast asses looking out the windows?

They could have asked for a entrance fee to help....

Nah......just make as much as you can and pocket it..

and they still have the casino

Is the casino open?

Yep

Okay, call them out for thinking they are being greedy. When could they have scheduled these races and get grade 1 quality fields?

There’s no place that fits on the calendar with all the movement.

Not that this is necessarily the case with Parx, but as we've seen with Arlington, there are times when the local horsemen PREFER that the track not run big money stakes where all that purse fund money tends to go to out-of-towners. If at least some of the money goes to overnights, it benefits those who race at Parx year-round. With PA racing being some of the last to return to action, that seems like a good thing.

When the debate in PA about taking casino revenue from Parx by the state took place (temporarily shelved due to COVID), it was shown that live racing at Parx is a massive money loser. They offer huge purses for the handle they have and it's entirely from the casino. Well, the casino was closed for months and now it's at 50% capacity, so where would the purse money for the PA Derby come from? I doubt they would have run those races even if there was a time slot to do so.

The majority is bet off track. On a blended basis (on-track and off-track handle), their takeout is probably around 6%, which means $120k/card in takeout. Roughly 25% to 30% of that goes to purses, or $30k to $36k/card. Needless to say, the daily handle doesn't even support the overnight purses. The casino subsidy is just starting to ramp back up, I assume.

we could be seeing a lot of this at the "slots" tracks.

Oaklawn managed. They have always been generous to the horsemen.

Their casino was closed down and live racing attendance closed when covid-19 struck, while they were simultaneously facing a $100 million upgrade to their facility.

People remember those things. As do the horsemen. Like when they came thru for the CA trainers and split the Rebel into 2 races and still paid a generous $750K instead of $1 million each in 2019.

But I do agree with Barchcapper about the PA horseman who race year round.

However, Maybe they should raise the payouts on some of those other races to make up for the money they are *saving* from not having to pay out on the big stakes races, eh?

Their purses are pretty decent for the kind of horses that run there.

their handle to purse ratio is one of the highest in the Country, meaning its not betting the product that fuels the purses.