Quote:
Originally Posted by alhattab
Absolutely true re the inbound simulcasts. An article from the Asbury Park Press on 6/18 addressed racing handle in light of the first weekend of sports betting, which was 6/16 and 6/17. It said "The racing numbers were up across the board on Sunday, including $1,211,030 bet on the in-house simulcast, up 8 percent from a year earlier, $973,402 bet on the live racing program, a 17-percent increase, and $4,886,393 bet on the Monmouth Park signal, up 18 percent." So on that day, there was almost 25% more bet on inbound simulcasts than there was on the live product, by people at Monmouth Park. This is part of the reason why the Monmouth per capita is so low- people are betting the simulcasts (and yes others are squatting in the picnic area not betting at all, or, now, are in the sports betting area).
Also you and others noted, adding Thursdays was a killer. Here are the numbers through July 21 as per an article in the July 22 Press:
"According to figures released by Monmouth Park on Sunday (7/23), live handle, the amount of money wagered on Monmouth Park races at the track, is up 8 percent over the same period a year ago, with $11,513,732 wagered. Total handle jumped 10 percent to $94,574,544." These numbers included only 2 Fridays vs 7 in 2017, and also included Derby Day in 2018 but not 2017, with total handle of $3.1 million.
So the Thursdays+Fridays combined (this year Fridays began on 7/13 vs in June in 2017) and some bad weather especially on those days resulted in huge average declines. I really think as a lower-tier track you have to set a schedule at the beginning of the meet and stick with it. On-track player awareness is low and simulcast players are set in their ways.
So while I agree the meet was not very bettable or aesthetically pleasing, the comps are apples and oranges in my view.
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There's a lot to unpack here.
First thing is we do not know what the overall simulcast numbers look like as Monmouth has selectively been releasing numbers. Not surprisingly they've been releasing numbers that make them look good. For instance, the article you cite addressing on-track handle on 6/16 & 6/17 of this year paints a very positive picture. But if you look a little deeper at the compare they are making, it kind of falls apart. For one, they ran 4 more races on those days vs 2017. For another those two days had 68 more betting interests vs 2017 (222 vs 154). That juices the overall number quite a bit. Again, at the per interest level, both on track and overall, the handle numbers were consistently down this year, sports betting or not. That, to me at least, is the KEY number, especially in a parimutuel environment of late that has seen modest increases nationwide, particularly on those signals where field size has improved.
I will not argue that adding Thursdays in August in place of Fridays in June was a bad move. For the most part, historically, these days are comparable though Fridays tend to have slightly more handle.
Second, conflating on track and overall handle numbers is pretty sound. Those numbers are historically correlated, particularly at MTH. For the last 10 years at MTH, when the overall handle went down, so did the on-track number, often right in line with each other. So to have one overall top number up 2.2% and another overall number down 2.2% is out of line with historic trends.
Weather is the weather. People like to say it rained and that's the end of any sort of critical analysis. But again, we have the per interest number that is very reliable to see which way the handle wind is blowing. For instance, at SAR this summer, despite really bad weather, the per interest was up 4% over the previous summer, which would make that a record number for SAR.
I've maintained that it's still very early days but it's hard to look at the numbers we do have and say it's "good".
