Quote:
Originally Posted by the little guy
Handle could well be down at Saratoga, last year's handle was a record by a substantial margin, but the economy is low as far as a possible factor for that. Weather will always be the biggest issue. Lose two Saturdays to rain and you can't be up. Field size is clearly the second biggest factor. Those two variables are also linked.
If field size is the same as 2021, and the weather is comparable, we will likely do similar numbers. Those, however, are big ifs.
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The small ups and and downs in the economy don't matter and probably won't factor at Saratoga this year at all, but the 2008-2011 period was a disaster for racing overall when we were in a deep recession and jobs hadn't really recovered. We still haven't gotten back to those peak levels. To me that suggests we are still in a large secular decline that was somewhat masked in recent years by the recovery from that recession period.
I haven't seen data going way back, but jobs have to matter, just not right now.
That's why I am very interested to see what happens in the next serious economic decline (that we may be getting close to with the Fed tightening). If it's as bad as the last one and the impact on handle as bad, a lot of tracks are going to be in trouble.
https://www.jockeyclub.com/default.a...tion=FB&area=8
