Betting Handle Down At Santa Anita

For all of the pagentry and excitement there’s one persistent reality about horse racing–it is a business. And like every other business it’s driven by the ‘bottom line’. That’s why horse racing media and fans discuss data on track attendance and betting handle with almost as much interest as the past performances of the horses themselves. The latest track to report their attendance/betting handle figures is Santa Anita and it’s decidedly a ‘mixed bag’.

Santa Anita just concluded their long Spring/Summer meet which included nearly six months of racing action. The good news? Attendance was up. The bad news? Betting handle was down. The track released a statement reporting that they tallied a 3 percent increase in attendance but a 5 percent decline in all-sources handle compared to a similar period last year.

It was a strange schedule at the track. In 2015, the Spring/Summer meet ran a straight six months. This year, there was a three week break in April when racing action moved to Los Alamitos. In addition, the track had no turf racing for the last three weeks of the meet due to renovations on the course. The course was entirely re-sodded which will make for better racing conditions going forward but in the short term hurt field sizes, the quality of racing and likely had an impact on betting handle. Santa Anita senior VP Joe Morris said that the loss of momentum due to the Spring hiatus was something of a surprise: “I didn’t anticipate the loss of momentum for the three weeks off in April. That was tough. We knew the last three weeks would be tough.”

There were other issues including unseasonably hot weather in Southern California. Nate Newby, Santa Anita VP of Marketing said it was a confluence of factors contributing to the decline: “There were a lot of little things that contributed. Last year, we finished really strong. The momentum wasn’t the same this year.”

The track is now in the process of planning their racing dates for 2017. These have not been finalized but Santa Anita has requested a continuous meeting beginning on December 26 and most likely running through late June without a break before racing shifts to Los Alamitos in early July.