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Recent past implies that a robust economy may help out Breeders via higher sales prices, but it’s difficult to make any correlation between economic conditions and racing handle. The favorable conditions (low unemployment, surging stock market) of the past twelve years certainly haven’t been any great driver of handle. In any case, economic conditions are something the horse race industry has no control over.
What the industry could do is address this structural disconnect: larger fields increase revenue for the tracks, but in the current system, larger fields are a punitive burden on Owners & Trainers. The industry needs to inject some flexibility into purse sizes and how they’re distributed so that significant percentages of the increased revenue that results from larger fields finds its way to the connections of the horses running 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th.
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