ONE YEAR AGO TODAY 12/22/13

[Robert Goren]

Stop cry over Hollywood Park. It was broke. And they went broke on merit. The NFL is a lot better use for the land. If the power that be in racing don't wake up, a lot more tracks will be going the way of Hollywood. At least the LA area still has Santa Anita.

[clocker7]

LA is a cruddy area for traditional American sports. The demographics are terrible. The immigrant flow is Mexican and Chinese. The traffic is miserable ... after fighting 6 days a week to go anywhere, why do it on Sunday, too?

There is probably no better indicator than UCLA basketball. Pauley has been remodeled nicely and it's not very big. Historic as heck. Yet highly ranked teams come into the place and it remains only 3/4 full. Sure, the team sucks this year, and it is a rebuilding one. But lesser teams elsewhere fill when an interesting invader comes to town.

All things considered, Santa Anita doesn't do all that badly.

[dilanesp]

Originally Posted by Robert Goren

Stop cry over Hollywood Park. It was broke. And they went broke on merit. The NFL is a lot better use for the land. If the power that be in racing don't wake up, a lot more tracks will be going the way of Hollywood. At least the LA area still has Santa Anita.

"Broke" isn't quite right. The track hadn't been profitable since the 1990's, but it wasn't insolvent. They could have kept racing there quite awhile.

The reason they stopped is because they could make a lot of money developing the land.

I miss BHP, but seriously, Santa Anita and Del Mar are doing much better with its old dates. The only track that does worse is Los Al, and I have a feeling that experiment is not going to last forever.

[delayjf]

I mean, all things being equal, I'd prefer never having an NFL team in LA again, and I had season tickets to the Raiders back in the day. But most fans can't afford tickets, and you get better games on television when you have no team.

I totally agree.

[Stillriledup]

Great video in HD.

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