Quote:
Originally Posted by o_crunk
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".
|
Crunk the point of including the 6/16-17 info was to show how much people at Mth bet on inbound simulcasts as compared w/ the Mth product. At least I think that is what the $1.2 million number cited reflects.
Also re. the comps, 6/17 was Father's Day with 23,000+ on track vs. 2017 with 18,000+ on track. Sports betting has something to do with the increase but I believe 2017 weather wasn't great or at least the forecast was bad- 18,000 is very low for Mth Father's Day- so there were many more people to bet both on and off track.
