Went to Aqueduct Saturday for the Gotham and noticed earlier this week that the New York Racing Fan Advisory Council would be holding its first public meeting. Here is some info on that body
http://www.nyra.com/aqueduct/stories/Feb292012.shtml
I didn't think to highly of this being another politically appointed body and the fact that Mr. Amo somehow managed to get himself on this board did little more than confirm this belief. But I figured if I was going to be there anyway, why not go and hear what they had to say.
Can't say I was overly impressed as they really didn't say a lot. Most of the speaking and information was given by Charlie Hayward and Ellen McClain from NYRA. They did have some interesting things to say which I'll get to in a sec. The meeting was pretty lightly attended. I'm assuming members of the press were there despite the fact that neither the Daily News nor Post said word one today about the meeting in their racing columns. Then again I don't think those guys ever leave the press box for anything as actaul reporting tends to be too much trouble. HANA had a rep there as well, who said nothing during the ample Q&A session, but I heard that private meetings had been arranged, so who knows what questions were asked, or what the answers were for that matter.
So what interesting things did I hear. Well there were a few things you'll like:
1) NYRA is in the process of installing free public wifi at all its tracks. Yep, this summer we should be able to connect at Saratoga. This is a great step. Hope it will be strong enough to make it usable for those that depend on their computers for handicapping. I know we've all been in airports which have this, but so many people are hitting it, it becomes hard to do any sort of meaningful downloading. We will see, but this is a good step.
2) HD signal is under consideration, but do not look for it soon. The equipment is expensive and the majority of outlets that take NYRA's signal do not have HD capability at this time. They believe it will be done, but is more of a mid-term project rather than short term.
3) This November NYRA will be opening a full blown simulcast center at Aqueduct. Some 100 TVs and 300 betting carrels will be installed and like the rest of the race side of the track, will have full wifi. The name made me cringe "Longshots". Cliched and unimaginative, but if that's the worst part of the project, then it ought to be pretty good.
4) NYRA projected given the current rates of daily average earning on the slots (including my favorite of all time, "Cougar Hunt") is about $342, which will give them about $27 million for capital improvements. Winter/Spring Aqu purses will be up $8.6 million and Fall purses will be up $4.5 million
5) By next fall much of the racing side will be remodelled with more new TVs and new carrels and chairs. They want to go back to the color scheme using the Aqueduct blue, which is a kind of nice teal color.
6) One construction project for fans at Saratoga was mentioned and you early risers will like this one. They are going to give back public access to the Oklahoma track in a section across from the Fasig-Tipton pavillion. I believe this summer you will be able to watch workouts from there, but by 2013, they plan to have a mini grandstand built complete with restrooms to watch workouts. Sounds kinda nice.
7) They talked about expansion of programming for the NYRA network, but no specifics were given.
8) A question was asked about more access to betting the races from the casion side. Mr. Hayward responded that that was something they would have to negotiate with Genting, who as I'm sure you all realise,, is much more interested in attracting people to bet with them. An interesting tidbit that was dropped about Genting was that they had been offered a chance to run NYCOTB and they turned it down. Not interested in racing.
9) Mention was also made that a bigger emphasis was already starting on NY breeding operations with Darley and Vinery moving what would have been Kentucky stallions here and the reopening of some farms that had closed. They believe that it will take about 3 years for those increses in horse population to show, but last years crop had already shown signs of increase and the average sale price of NY breds had also gone way up. The bonus for stakes winning 2yos that broke their maidens in NY was also discussed as Darley was also known to have gone shoping for about 10 2yos specifically to bring here, which was completely spurred by the new initiative.
10) There is a big emphasis on the production of an I love NY Racing promo campaign. In fact this is something this committee is specifically charged with. I'm sure it will show beautiful and majestic images of racing and little to nothing about betting. This falls in my "whatever..." category of importance.
Rules and takeout were something mentioned to be discussed at the beginning, but no one said or asked anything about them.
More things may have been said or asked later as after the meeting they did a tour of Aqueduct, but I've already seen the place and wanted to bet the first race and watch Andy's show, so I cut out at that point.
Thank you very much for this information , Al. Please keep us up to date, as I am very interested in all these updates at NYRA.
