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Originally Posted by o_crunk
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.
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This post is obviously correct.