1st Racing go F yourself
 

I mean really, use eminent domain to also take Santa Anita back

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story...ita-sell-close

Seems like some petty gamesmanship dosen’t it

Racing in the north won't work anymore. They'd have extremely small fields plus fair takeout rates which are much higher than Golden Gate takeout.

This threat was easy to see coming. As it is I doubt Santa Anita has long to go either.

there is no threat, they can't do to much with the property other than race horses there, the town of Arcadia will not allow it.

for such a big parcel of land that they own, they really do underperform.

Politics and huge taxes can change anything

As often said in financial markets, "past performance is no guarantee of future results". However, one can reasonably map possible outcomes for Santa Anita.

Take a few minutes to read the history of the Stronach Group from Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stronach_Group

Five racetracks are still in play with Stronach - Santa Anita, Gulfstream, Golden Gate, Laurel, and Rosecroft (harness). Golden Gate is closing, Laurel is caught in the Pimlico ("donated" to the state of Maryland) redevelopment mess, and Santa Anita now enters the fight.

Personally, I do not think that this story is saber rattling. This is about the property's valuation and the ROI of those capital (cash and kind) assets.

The continuation of racing in NoCal could change the potential ROI calculation of the capital locked up in Santa Anita for the coming years. Without having access to that business plan, this is guessing at best. However, if the handle from NoCal does not transfer south, sale of the property becomes increasingly likely.

What will poor Bob do without SA to pillage ?

Pretty sure the new northern racing deal won't happen. And yes the "Card Wrecker" has hurt So Cal racing for years. For every horse he has here if he left 2 would ship in. Nobody wants to race against his maidens

The same thing that made 1'st racing mostly irrelevant in MD is doing the same to them in California. 1st racing's opinion that revenue from outside gambling (slots revenue) wouldn't help racing. When they bought the tracks in MD they gave the previous owner Joe Defrancis Jr. the rights to all slots revenue at the tracks. The problem with that is the MD legislature wanted to put outside gambling at the tracks to help the owner redevelop the tracks. Eventually MD built casinos at other locations and diverted some of the revenue to the state racing purse account to enlarge purses. Either 1st racing's short sited opinion of outside gambling money wasn't good for racing, or the Defrancis family getting some of that money, prevented the state from giving control of that money to 1st racing. The breeders and horse owners put together a nonprofit and were given control of the state's racing purse account. lol 1st Racing would come to the non profit every year with their hands out to help pay for the overhead of operating the tracks. The non profit has had control of racing for years. lol It was finally put in writing with the recent agreement giving the non profit control of Pimlico.

Without help from outside gambling to pay for racing in California, the tracks will suffer a slow death. Thankfully Breeders and Horse owners avoided that outcome in MD by taking control of racing through the back door lol.

IMO CA racing is close to done.

Both the politics and economics are worse than in most places around the country.

The far left leaning parts of the country don't want racing and the CA tracks can't compete with tracks elsewhere that get revenue from casinos (the sustainability of which is an entirely different conversation).

On top of the uncompetitive purses that make it tough for owners and trainers, the costs are higher.

How is anyone supposed to survive?

Then we still have to consider the land value and the kind of profits a property could generate if it was used for something that actually made economic and societal sense.

This going to be another industry driven out of business in CA. IMO we are debating the when not if. I give it 10 years, but that's just a wild guess. I could easily be wildly optimistic.

I don't think this has any impact...and if it does, it's at the very bottom of their to-do list...

plus no politics in the racing topics...lol

I didn't mean for it to be a value judgement on CA's left leaning politics, but I think politics, economics and racing are almost inseparable. Some environments are better than others.

To get certain things done you need approvals that can be a lot tougher to come by if the population and leaders of the state/locality don't care much about your industry and don't want to help create an economic environment and rules where your industry can survive and thrive. KY is a great place for racing to do business. CA is a tough place for racing to do business. That's just a reality that IMO is going to contribute to the eventual demise of CA racing.

The argument, of course, completely falls apart when you bring NY into the equation.

Stop bringing your political crap into the racing rooms.

I didn't want to say this, but this is right.

Look, we're most likely not going to have racing in California in a few years, except maybe Del Mar and perhaps a fair meet or two. The economics don't work anymore.

But if we ARE to save racing in California, if it is saveable, we can only have one circuit. I would have preferred that this would have included northern California, and that we had done this when Hollywood Park closed, with a return to the pre-1960's single circuit where we move between the South and the North. But the horsemen threw a temper tantrum so we got a Los Al meet nobody wanted instead.

So it's either we let Santa Anita have its chance to consolidate everything in Southern California along with Del Mar, or we close Santa Anita and just go into the death spiral.

EDIT: And BTW, this is mostly a problem of costs (our labor costs are HUGE) and geography (we have to basically operate on our own island because we are so far away from any other major racing circuit, whereas New York benefits from being interconnected with Maryland, Pennsylvania, Florida, etc.). It's not because we are a lefty state (although in the LONG TERM, there's a possibility that we ban horse racing because of our politics).

The economics of racing are returning to a time before mutual pools became legalized and other forms of gambling were illegal. Racing competes with all forms of gambling. It will survive where tax payers think it's important. States that racing is historically important will do what needs to be done to keep tracks open. Racing in California actively didn't want to get involved with casino gambling, and it has come back to haunt them. It allowed politicians to mimic those thoughts. A tax on internet gambling could assist the tracks, but 1st racing needs to actively start looking at alternatives. Instead of looking for alternatives 1st racing's reaction is similar to Benny Hill's comedic schtick, "we stuck our finger in our ear and sang tinga linga loo".