2020 KY Derby action less than half of prior years
 

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Kentucky Derby........parimutuel handle................WinPlaceShow Pool




2020.......................................$31,110 ,660


2019........................................$65,37 6,107


2018........................................$62,33 6,448







2020 action less by more than half compared to prior years






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I'm surprised it wasn't worse with no one being there. The vast majority of the people at the Derby don't know anything about racing, but are there for the party.

I don't think Churchill has anything to worry about. It was on a different date than everyone is used to, Churchill had no spectators (I know a ton of money is off track, but the more than 100,000 on track every year do bet!), many places where the Derby is simulcast every year are also closed to spectators (for instance, we always get a big Derby handle here in Southern California at Santa Anita (or Hollywood Park back in the day) and that didn't happen this year), etc.

I'd say they did very well considering all the obstacles.

i saw races at Will Rodgers and Fonner Park handle $10 million on a tuesday afternoon this year when the government was handing out unemployment and stimulus checks.

no one has had a check now in over a month.

That too.

Well there had been this whole narrative that racing was gain new steam with the pandemic, fri and sat numbers kinda blew that apart. It was a false narrative anyway as deeper dives have not supported it. Saratoga for instance the last month has regularly had handles the lowest in a long time.

Almost 10% of the country is unemployed...and has been for quite a while. And those that do still have jobs are probably saving as much as they can just to be safe.

There's a reason why people aren't betting on racing...they don't have any disposable income.

Where have you people been living recently? You do realize what is happening out there, right?

Saratoga, as I said at the time, was a NYRA blunder. They spent all that money moving everyone up there to accomplish... nothing they couldn't have accomplished at Belmont.

Not saying the economy didn't have anything to do with it. Obviously, it did.

Just looking at handle numbers for Saturday on Labor Day Weekend last year vs. this year, both Saratoga and Del Mar fared much better percentage-wise than Churchill did with the Derby:

If the bulk of the fall-off in Derby handle was economy related, I'm thinking both Saratoga and Del Mar would have seen a fall-off in handle similar to the Derby.

Imo, there's more going on here than just the economy.

I'm thinking moving the Derby to Labor Day weekend didn't work out that well for Churchill because:

Churchill's main competition (this year) was Saratoga and Del Mar as opposed to Belmont and a winding down Santa Anita meet. (Imo, much tougher company.)

Also missing this year were 100k plus fans on track at Churchill.

Perhaps more important, there's the tens of thousands of horseplayers across the US and Canada who normally spend Derby Day at a brick and mortar simulcast facility. For a lot of them (myself included) that wasn't an option this year.

For a lot of people, there's something about being there in person (even if 'there' happens to be your local track or otb) that translates to Derby Fever.

Imo, Derby Fever is what makes the Derby a special event.

I don't know about anyone else - but I did not experience much in the way of Derby Fever this year.



-jp

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Derby Day is by far the biggest special event day in racing, and the "special event" part was taken away by everything we're all aware of that's going on in the world. I don't see how you can make even an apples-to-bowling balls comparison on the handle numbers.

I got fed up with NBC and turned it off until right before the Derby started and quit betting for the rest of the day.

The only way to even get anything out of this is a determination on whether ADW wagering dropped. That’s the only constant still available to all from last year but that’s still apples to oranges when you compare a 15 horse field to a 20 horse field

I still can’t believe they couldn’t fill a 20 horse field with a handful of dreamers looking to try to sneak into the money

Are you not considering just how much money is bet on the Derby by non-hardcore players? Compare that to percentage of handle bet on Del Mar and Saratoga by non-hardcore players...

And therein will lie at least some (maybe a good portion) of the drop off in Derby handle...a TON more people bet the Derby every year than ever bet a race at Saratoga or Del Mar.

I would venture a guess that the hardcore players who make up a really good chunk of Del Mar and Saratoga handle aren't going to restrict their outlay as much as the everyday person who ONLY bets the Derby but didn't this year because of the economy.

Yea there's just too much else going on right now to make any sort of comparisons or draw conclusions IMO. Riots are going on every night in my city, horse racing isn't on the radar for casuals. Even with the TVG ads I saw that were nice. ;)

I agree with everything you said, the bulk of the downturn in their numbers was the moving of the date, no in person and a very small OTB type presence.

That being said if you look at Saratoga this past month, the way it had been trending year over year, and even back to a few months ago, it was no shock it turned out to be such a bad day.

I have no idea how Del Mar is doing, I have been too busy to follow and have seen less on social media about their numbers. I would expect they are just as bad as everywhere else the past 6 weeks.

Two things:

1. One reason idiots enter their no chance horses is because the Derby is a big party for the owners. Not thus year.

2. Later in the year, we are a lot more sure of horses' form. In May, they are still telling themselves their horses might be good enough.

wonder if the stock takes a hit on Tuesday?

Marketwatch shows:

dated: Sep 4, 2020 7:32 p.m. EDT
Delayed quote
$178.00
+4.92 2.84% after hours

Might have to buy a few shares if it drops in the $160s

Uh, the dream usually had by most of those ended 2 1/2 months ago.

You are ballsy maintaining this completely inaccurate stance. You REALLY think they were handling $700 million over the last 40 racing days at Belmont. There is no chance whatsoever.

agree, they would have handled less no doubt, especially considering the quality of the fields compared to normal saratoga.

Probably would not have broke 500 million.

You are being grossly misleading. So they handle $500 million instead (I don't buy that, because bettors bet the race, not brand names, but let's say you are right). What is NYRA's PROFIT MARGIN on that 200 million? Not takeout. Profit margin. 2 percent? 1 percent? Negative? (Could be, given the cost of all the virus protocols.)

Now how much did it cost all those horsemen to move up? Yes, NYRA didn't pay that cost, but its constituents did.

No fricking way did this turn out to be cost justified. In the actual bowels of NYRA management, I am sure they know this. They were hoping they could browbeat Cuomo to let them sell tickets.

Those numbers were severely inflated due to the fact that most tracks were closed at the time. Also horse racing was the only sport to bet on. A major miss at all these tracks ( especially Saratoga) was my idea I mentioned a while back on here.....drive thru wagering. It became a reality this past week at Plainridge In Massachusetts. Saratoga missed out on a lot of dead money this year and the drive thru betting would have made up for a portion of that. My understanding is that nobody thought of it until it was too late to make a plan.

It's closer than many informed people would think. BEL handled $1.55M per race this spring. SAR handled $1.71M. BEL handled almost $400M over just 25 days this Spring. It's not outlandish to think that if they stayed down at BEL, field size would have improved. Some of the claimers that went to MTH and other mid-Atlantic tracks stayed home at BEL and raced there instead of skipping SAR completely - which they did. Given the same stakes program as upstate, it's not impossible.

Still, $700M is a good number for SAR this year. Yes, they had an extra 2 days this year and they sandbagged a bunch of races onto the last weekend to make it happen *BUT* they did themselves no favors when they carded horrible betting races in the last half of the meet, which lead to some of the smallest handled cards at SAR in a decade.

There's this old world thinking that people bet more because it's Saratoga. When there's nobody in the grandstand that simply does not matter. Saratoga's market share declined this summer on the pure numbers. Belmont's certainly did not. What this means is that putting bettable races in front of customers is more important than ever. If you don't do that, they don't bet. Today's closing card was the only card all meet with 100+ betting interests and the bettors rewarded them with the highest handled card in the last 3 weeks and the highest handled non-Saturday card ever.

This data has been plain as day for 5 months of covid. Bad cards handle less than before. Good cards handle more than before. Where they take place does not matter.

As I've said, there are too many moving parts right now to say almost anything with certainty.

1. We have significant unemployment

2. Many tracks were closed, then slowly reopened.

3. There were no other sports/casinos to gamble on for awhile, then they slowly reopened.

4. There's no live attendance at most tracks

5. There was pent up demand when racing returned that slowly diminished as bankrolls were used up

6. The one time stimulus checks put extra money in the hands of gamblers temporarily

No one can control for all those offsetting negatives, positives, and moving parts.

There are a few things we know for certain from the data that O'Crunk has been posting and from the math of the handle.

1. Fewer tracks being opened at the same time lead to significantly increased handle for the ones that were opened first.

2. As more tracks opened, money started shifting towards higher quality, better racing, and larger fields

3. The more your overall handle and profit margin is dependent on fans being at the track, the harder you were hit by not having fans both in terms of volume of betting and profit margin on bets at other ADWs.

4. Related to #2, IMO you can't compare handle at AQU, BEL, and SAR even if you control for field size and other factors because the quality of the racing at the 3 tracks is completely different. The "brand value" of each is in part related to the quality of the racing that's typical at that track (Grade 1 stakes, mid week stakes, super stakes cards, turf racing vs, cheap maidens, cheap NW2L claimers, bad statebreds etc..). If you shifted the quality of any of them up or down the handle would change to some extent right away and then more so over time.

At this point we should just be happy racing is back and Saratoga had good weather for its turf racing compared to many other years.

Why bother? You're responding to someone who was as wrong as anyone could possibly be, for months, about literally everything, yet has the nerve to come here and wave a victory flag, when any even reasonable person would admit he was wrong, and move on. It's actually sad.

Forget about the fact that the Saratoga meet would likely have been held at Aqueduct, or at least the majority of it, in order to run the needed turf races, for us to still be at Belmont for the upcoming six weeks. So while Belmont would have handled a fraction of what Saratoga did, Aqueduct would have handled even less....but you know all this.

Only someone with a ridiculous agenda would ignore how much more attention was paid to Saratoga Live than the shows at Belmont and not realize this goes hand in hand with the higher handle numbers.

But forget about all that, and so many other things not even worth bringing up ( I'll keep this under the length of the average post from one of the defeated ), an important factor that nobody has mentioned is that this year's Saratoga meet confirmed NYRA's commitment to the city of Saratoga, and the surrounding areas. Had we not run, the storyline right now would be "Will they even be back in 2021?" It's not even a question, and the simple fact is that no matter what they think or say, the naysayers around here have absolutely no idea the importance of Saratoga to the State of NY. Fortunately, NYRA does

Come on Andy. You have no idea how "Saratoga at Aqueduct" would have played. It might have been just fine

Meanwhile your employer acted in a completely scummy fashion for all the horsemen you guys forced to move up to upstate New York in the middle of a pandemic. If NYRA really made so much money, how about NYRA pays for those expenses?

NYRA is a cancer.

This post is obviously correct.

And you don't have any idea about how it woudl have gone either, though I'm sure if it was a disaster you'd be on here pointing out how they should have done something different.

Wow bro...this is about as short a concession speech as we've ever seen. Thanks.

I’m glad that NYRA chose to move it’s tact from Belmont and have the meet in Saratoga. There were a lot of people that said it wasn’t going to happen and I can understand why. I don’t agree with them but I understand and accept their opinions. With that said NYRA being in town made very little impact to the tourism revenue that is projected to be down 65% for the summer season. Obviously fans not being allowed in was the difference as well as other major attractions being closed due to covid. So that typical infusion of 250 million into the capital region during the racing meet never came. I still say some track revenue could have been salvaged if my drive thru wagering idea came to fruition. There could have been a drive thru tour of the track included with that as well but I guess there was never enough time to plan any of this.

I find it amazing that some people still don't seem to understand that "brand" and "quality" are strongly related.

Saratoga is Coke or Pepsi and AQU is Publix Brand Cola.

The thing is, if you put the higher quality product into the generic package and vice versa, people will quickly figure out the quality has changed and change their behavior.

Run great race cards at AQU or BEL and they will do way better.

Run garbage race cards at SAR and it will do way worse.

Any comparison must include that assumption, but without data we can't know the "exact" impact of running races/cards like the Travers, Woodward, CCAO, Whitney, Test, Ballerina, Alabama, Forgeo, Sword Dancer, Diana (and on and on) at Belmont the way we can with a few things O'Crunk helped determine with data. We can just assume Belmont would have done better (probably a lot) than it did in the spring where it was up 42% going into Saratoga.

O'Crunk did a very good job on handle issues during this period. I'm sure tracks could learn a few things from it. Someone should give him a job doing this kind of work.

It takes years if not decades for that to happen. Saratoga had some of the worst cards I’ve ever seen from a major track , including a calendar week of 5 days and more than 50 races with just one 10 horse field yet people still bet enthusiastically because the brand is so strong and we love nostalgia. Those feelings are so strong that subconsciously one poster actually thought that the fields were large this year. A steady diet of 5 horse fields at Saratoga will out handle 8 horse fields at Belmont, even if it’s the same pool of horses. Belmont after the quarantine was exceptional and much better than Saratoga this year.

I don’t think dead money discriminates based on quality of horses and races. Saratoga probably takes in more dead money then any other track out there because of the thousands of tourists that visit each year. They don’t care about quality of racing. I know a lot of avid bettors who missed all that dead money this year at the Spaaaaaaa.

* For those that don’t understand. In horse racing, gamblers use the term “ recreational money “ to classify novices who typically bet a lot of “dead” money into the pari-mutuel pools.

I’m not sure there’s any dead money left in the game

:ThmbUp:

IMO...the "dead money" is already buried.

I agree it takes many years to fully establish a brand among casual players, but we already know that people bet more on high quality races and cards, super cards etc.. than lower quality races. So imo it's preposterous to compare 16K NW2L claimers and NY Breds at AQU to the biggest most important stakes and race cards in the world at Saratoga.

You could run the Travers, Whitney etc.. cards at Fonner Park and it would have an immediate huge impact on Fonner's handle, let alone running them at Belmont or Aqueduct with national coverage and a build up on Fox so people knew.

No one is saying Saratoga doesn't have a special brand.

People are saying if you are going to compare handles and "costs" at least "attempt" to do it right.

The dead money at Saratoga is the casual fan that goes there for the unique racetrack experience, the bars, restaurants, and music at night, the spas, Lake George etc.. but doesn't bet the rest of the year except for maybe the Triple Crown and Breeder's Cup. That's part of the "brand". It's the town and vacation experience that attracts people to the track. I have friends that go to Saratoga every year that fall into that category. They don't bet a dime other than when they go to Saratoga racetrack. Much of that handle was absent, but we knew that would happen going in given no fans. Tracks (or races like the Derby) that usually get a lot of on track handle have an extra headwind in year to year comparisons.

I seem to remember a whole lot of jockeys, owners, trainers singing the praises of being able to be at Toga THIS year in the post-race interviews with Maggie and Acacia and Richie.

No one had to go there.

NYRA pay the expenses....what a crock! :lol::lol::lol:
Now you are swinging and hoping. https://media.tenor.com/images/82faa...4289/tenor.gif