Why California horse racing is struggling to | College News

As the wildfires devastated elements of the San Gabriel Valley, Santa Anita Park did what locals all the time have counted on the 80-year-old monitor to do. It stepped up and fulfilled its position as a group citizen.

It canceled racing the primary week after the fires in order that the monitor’s expansive space might be used as a heart for donation assortment and distribution, staging utility automobiles that have been serving to battle the fires and housing giant animals that would not be accommodated at animal shelters. The monitor was unaffected by the fires and the air high quality was nicely within the vary for protected racing.

Santa Anita did what was best for Arcadia, Altadena, Pasadena and different areas that have been affected by the worst fire catastrophe in L.A. historical past.

It’s not the primary time Santa Anita has stepped up. It donated the land on the nook of Huntington and Baldwin for a fire station. It additionally gave away the land close to the monitor that homes the Arcadia City Hall and police division.

But these charitable gestures are getting more durable to pull off. The sport is a long time previous the times when automobiles would back up onto Baldwin Avenue after leaving the 210 freeway, spectators simply making an attempt to get into the Santa Anita parking zone. The Santa Anita Handicap is no longer a must-attend occasion for horsemen nationally. Gone are aggressive purses as a result of of the shortage of a secondary source of income reminiscent of on line casino playing. Field sizes are so small that it cripples wagering. And attendance is a fraction of what it was years in the past.

The unfathomable concept that the monitor might quickly close or be bought is nearer to actuality than ever.

The Stronach Group, proprietor of Santa Anita and Gulfstream Park in Florida, has employed Keith Brackpool, a former TSG govt and chairman of the California Horse Racing Board, to kick the tires on a doable sale of the company’s 1/ST Racing division and the tracks, in accordance to two people with data of the state of affairs not licensed to communicate publicly.

While they publicly are saying Santa Anita is not for sale, Brackpool met with at the very least one investor concerning the sale, in accordance to the 2 people with data of the state of affairs not licensed to talk about it publicly. The understanding is if the monitor have been bought, whoever buys it will proceed racing at the very least within the short time period.

The price tag of $2 billion was thought to be too high for at the very least one potential purchaser who was more within the look-and-see mode, the people mentioned. The land the 2 properties sit on is simply value more than $2 billion, however as race tracks, not a lot.

TSG denied a Times request for an interview with Brackpool and he didn’t return a telephone message.

While neither confirming nor denying the small print, TSG issued a assertion that learn: “Racing in California is facing challenging economic circumstances. This is not an easy problem to solve. We are continuously thinking about solutions and in discussions with various stakeholders about the best way forward. Those discussions remain ongoing.”

The risk to racing in California is existential. And if racing within the state have been to go away, it isn’t simply a California drawback. The branches of the game are intertwined nationally regardless of the territoriality that exists between racing organizations. Racing is a four-legged stool, with one of the legs being Kentucky; one other New York; tracks that maintain boutique meets reminiscent of Keeneland in Kentucky, Oaklawn in Arkansas and the winter meets at Gulfstream and Tampa Bay in Florida; and eventually there is California.

If racing turns into a three-legged stool, the possibilities of collapse are main.

Santa Anita has been there when the group needed help. But now, it’s the monitor that wants help. And by extension, so does horse racing within the United States.

The greater query: Is anyone prepared to help them?

In order to discover out what racing executives take into consideration the longer term of racing in California and the U.S., The Times spent a number of days on the fiftieth Global Symposium on Racing in Tucson in December.

About two dozen industry people painted a image laced with shreds of optimism, however provided that California can get Historical Horse Racing (HHR), an digital gaming product, to complement purses. Without it, few see hope of survival. The tracks say they’re working towards a resolution however offer little public proof of success because it seemingly would take an settlement with Native American tribes, which control non-pari-mutuel playing in California.

Jockey Hector I. Berrios steers El Potente to a win within the Grade III $100,000 Thunder Road Stakes horse race on Feb. 1 at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia.

(Uncredited / Associated Press)

The issues with racing didn’t simply crop up. The decline has been occurring for fairly some time.

Sal Sinatra, 60, has been round horses since he was 12 years outdated. He grew up within the business and was the vice president of racing at Parx Racing in Pennsylvania, president and common supervisor of the Maryland Jockey Club and chief govt of Equibase, a company that provides racing statistics.

He’s at the moment a advisor for the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority.

“I play fantasy sports,” Sinatra mentioned, talking as a horse proprietor, not as a HISA advisor. “Last night I was up all night because I played in a lousy $10 tournament and I won $10,000. I have more enjoyment doing that. I live in Lexington [Ky.] and every bar has [FanDuel] on, I have a [betting] account. I don’t even look up at the track or bet anything.”

Now, don’t mistake Sinatra as somebody who has deserted the game. He had simply completed a workshop with many of the nation’s racing secretaries, offering concepts on how to make the game more engaging to clients. He actually desires horse racing to thrive, he’s simply not sure how.

“I have two mares at home, and I’m not sure what I’m doing because I don’t know what it’s going to be like in three or four years,” Sinatra mentioned. “We move like snails in this industry. If we do not protect the small outfits [trainers and owners], whether it’s by ratings classifications rather than claiming [races], the sport is limited.

“It’s the people who used to breed and race for joy, the people who protected horse racing now see it as time to retire, they’re out of the game. I think it’s very important to look at that sector. I really believe there’s a lot of purse money out there that is not being paid properly to keep the economic engine flowing.”

Sinatra was fast to recall tales of his time on the entrance line of racing, particularly operating the Maryland Jockey Club, whose marquee race is the Preakness Stakes.

He painted a image of dysfunction that included exaggerated attendance numbers, a former boss’ obsession with mutuel deal with (going as far as to give Sinatra wads of money to wager to give the mutuel pool a good head begin), and deficits in his racing funds as a result of of having to transfer money from racing to assist big-name musical expertise on the Preakness.

He urged the roots of the issues prolong past Maryland and have been round racing for many years.

“Simulcasting has destroyed us,” he mentioned, referring to the observe of broadcasting races on TV or at different tracks the place betting can happen. “We all thought we had found money and then the simulcasters were in our own state and our own backyard. We just poached our own bettors away. That’s all we did, for less money. It’s just insane.”

Sinatra additionally believes the inflow of money via on line casino playing has been a drawback for the industry.

“The casinos do better when we race as if we’re a sideshow for them,” Sinatra mentioned. “So, they want us to run and don’t care if you run five-horse fields and make no handle. When my budget comes out, I’ve lost $3 million and I want to cut days but I can’t.

“When the subsidies came in, we did the wrong thing. We just said, ‘OK, here’s your millions of dollars, horsemen, increase purses.’ And a lot of things were wrong.”

Sinatra thinks there ought to be coordination between monitor organizations, which traditionally has been as achievable as detente between the Hatfields and McCoys. A really outdated analogy for entrenched rivalries in a sport that is growing older not so gracefully.

“When I was first at Parx and it went from $125,000 [in purses] a day to $250,000 a day, and I had all this extra money for stakes,” Sinatra mentioned, “I called The Jockey Club, and I said, ‘Before I do this, I should contact the graded stakes committee and suggest what races I’m going to add money to’ and the group says ‘No, there are already three in that category.’

“You have to either increase distances or put them on different surfaces. That’s what they should have to do. But they say they can’t do that. I’m like, well, otherwise, everybody’s going to have million-dollar races all over the place and there’s no planning, there’s nothing.

“This is insanity, what we do.”

So, does Sinatra have any hope for California?

“Under the current domain, I’d say no,” he mentioned. “Horses aren’t coming to California. In my estimation as an East Coaster, they killed off the north, which is where most of your farms are. So now, what are you going to do? Supply California with horses bought from Kentucky? It doesn’t seem right.”

California didn’t get to this place in a single day. Some of the injuries are self-inflicted. Other issues, and probably the most tough to remedy, deal with the altering sports activities panorama and the gulf between people who view horses as pets and people who view them as livestock.

TSG, pushed by racing pursuits in Southern California, performed a sport of Sophie’s Choice, deciding it needed to kill racing in Northern California to save racing to the south.

Hall of Fame jockey Russell Baze crosses the end line to win at Golden Gate Fields in Albany on Jan. 1, 2008. Golden Gate Fields closed in 2023.

(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)

TSG clumsily introduced the deliberate closure of its Northern California mainstay, Golden Gate Fields, on the finish of 2023 with out consulting its stakeholders. It agreed — some may say was pressured — to keep the monitor open one other six months if there was no protest about a deliberate legislative modification that the simulcast money usually focused for the north would go to the south if there is no racing within the north.

The north capitulated and even deliberate its own circuit, calling it Golden State Racing. It ran for 25 days, failed to meet any of its financial objectives and pulled its license software for this yr.

TSG might have been the architect of the closure of Northern California racing, however the Thoroughbred Owners of California was driving the getaway car, primarily supporting racing solely in Southern California. It drew up benchmarks for achievement within the north that even Santa Anita would have had issue executing. Several Northern California board members give up in protest.

At one level in coping with the California Horse Racing Board, Craig Fravel, the previous chief govt of 1/ST Racing, despatched a letter threatening the board with closing Santa Anita if it didn’t get its manner.

TSG not too long ago went to the identical playbook in regard to Gulfstream Park. The monitor’s operators are pushing for one thing referred to as “decoupling,” which might imply it might operate its slot-based on line casino with out having to run horse racing. The similar decoupling occurred to canine racing, harness racing, quarter-horse racing and jai alai a few years in the past. Dog racing was killed by poll initiative in Florida and the opposite sports activities are, for all intents and functions, nonexistent.

At a latest assembly with Florida horsemen, Brackpool and TSG govt Stephen Screnci mentioned if horsemen don’t oppose decoupling, they’ll promise racing for at the very least three more years. If they oppose it, the monitor might close sooner.

The horsemen took it as a risk as one may anticipate, main to a fistfight after the assembly.

TSG chief govt Belinda Stronach poured gasoline on the state of affairs in an interview on NBC during protection of the Pegasus World Championship final week when she mentioned: “The fact is that Gulfstream Park is now in a very dense, urban setting, and that’s not great for horses, ultimately.”

Not talked about is that each one three Triple Crown races — the Kentucky Derby (Louisville, Ky.), the Preakness (Baltimore) and the Belmont Stakes (quickly to be back in Long Island after a rebuild) — are in city areas.

Jerry Bailey, a Hall of Fame jockey and NBC commentator, acknowledged after the section that Gulfstream Park could be gone in 10 years.

Any manner you have a look at it, the decoupling transfer makes a potential sale of the monitor a lot simpler.

Blackpool, a controversial determine in California who has settled lawsuits he filed in opposition to Stronach, is taking part in a important position main discussions concerning the future of racing. Missing from the Florida assembly with horsemen was Aidan Butler, the present chief govt of 1/ST Racing. Butler, when reached by The Times, declined to talk about any side of company business, as an alternative referring to the assertion issued by TSG.

The one factor that the majority agree on is that there is an excessive amount of racing. The drawback is that contraction is great as long because it’s not your business that is contracting. And therein lies one other drawback racing hasn’t fixed.

“I guess there’s a difference between contraction and a sport dying,” mentioned Robert Hartman, chair of the distinguished Race Track Industry Program on the University of Arizona and host of the annual world symposium.

“Let’s say that healthy contraction could be good for an industry. You see what’s going on in California. Some determined that one racing circuit could make racing healthy and bolster that circuit. The fear is two unhealthy racing circuits may lead to them both dying.

“That type of contraction could be beneficial to the industry. It’s not just racing, it happens in food products or automobile manufacturing or other industries [where contraction] makes that industry healthier.”

Martin Garcia rides Citizen Bull to victory within the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile horse race in Del Mar on Nov. 1.

(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)

Craig Dado, who was a Del Mar advertising govt for 20 years and is at the moment the president of Sports Injury Central, attracts an analogy to skilled sports activities.

“We’ve always argued [there is too much racing] from a marketing perspective,” Dado mentioned. “You’ve got 18 NFL games a year per team. You’ve got 162 baseball games. If you run four days a week, 52 weeks a year, my goodness, that might be too much.

“Maybe the market is telling you there is too much. Maybe we need breaks. Every idea like that comes with a whole set of negatives as to why it doesn’t work. So, there’s no easy answer in California, but I’m praying that they figure it out, because I am a horse owner and I still love going to the gate, going to the tracks, so I hope it works out.”

The racing panorama in California modified in 2013 when Hollywood Park closed and ultimately grew to become SoFi Stadium. The sport believed it needed year-round racing. Santa Anita elevated its signature meet to about six months, not together with its fall assembly. Del Mar added a monthlong fall assembly to its summer time meet. And Los Alamitos, a quarter-horse monitor, was the actual hero, reconfiguring its monitor to a mile and including about six weeks of daytime thoroughbred racing to fill the gaps.

But was that the fitting transfer?

“There’s no question that the less you run, the more demand there is for your product,” Dado mentioned. “It’s old-school Economics 101, supply and demand. The more you run, the less demand there’s going to be. However, when you add in all those additional dates, even though you’re not as big per day, it still may make a better business platform. Especially when your state is basically saying, ‘If you don’t do it, we’re not going to make it.’ Then they forced Del Mar’s hands.

“Did we want to add the fall dates? There was a lot of consternation over that, but one of the reasons we really agreed to do it is because we thought we’d get the Breeders’ Cup by doing it. That was the feather in the cap of that discussion.”

Flavien Prat celebrates after driving Sierra Leone to victory within the Breeders’ Cup Classic horse race in Del Mar on Nov. 2.

(Gregory Bull/AP)

This yr Del Mar will host the Breeders’ Cup for the third time and second yr in a row.

“Let’s say Del Mar adds three more weeks [if Santa Anita were to stop racing],” Dado mentioned. “Would Del Mar want to do it? Probably not because it’s going to make those days that they already have less special. But if the industry is saying they need to do it, then Del Mar’s going to have to step up.”

Joe Morris, the previous head of West Coast racing for TSG and at the moment the senior vice-president of racing for Caesars Entertainment, factors to a specific drawback.

“The formula to building handle and having a successful meet is you need the stock,” Morris mentioned. “I don’t think they can fix the problem. Thirty years ago, there were 20 to 25 major farms in California. Now there are just a handful. So, where are you going to get the product? The cost of living is such that it is hard to go out there if you are a trainer and put your help up and things like that.”

When Santa Anita’s house owners closed Golden Gate, one of their plans was to begin rebuilding all of the barns at Santa Anita. Nineteen months after the announcement, there was no considerable construction on the barns.

“I don’t see them ever getting the product,” Morris mentioned. “Can Del Mar get enough to ship in? I don’t know. If you don’t have product, you don’t have racing. So now you’re racing short fields and less races and the gamblers know that’s not what they need. They want more races and full fields.”

In 1990, there have been 44,143 horses foaled in North America, which incorporates Canada and Puerto Rico. In 2023, it was down to an estimated 18,500. The foal crop has declined the final eight years.

Marshall Gramm, 51, is a numbers man. He’s a professor of economics at Rhodes College in Memphis who has printed a number of papers about playing and horse racing. He teaches a class within the economics of wagering. Gramm is a common participant within the National Horseplayers Championship.

It’s an odd spot for somebody who was not uncovered to racing as a baby. But Gramm, who is additionally a horse proprietor, is addicted to the information and the handicapping sport.

“Kentucky and Arkansas look pretty safe, and we have this new commitment to Maryland and New York, so I think that there’s probably more optimism now about what the future could bring overall in the landscape than what it was a couple of years ago,” Gramm mentioned.

“What happens in Florida, what happens in Texas, what happens with HISA, what happens in California, those are different questions. Everyone I’ve talked to believes that California will be gone in a couple of years. I’m not as pessimistic, but maybe it’s because I’m naive.”

Gramm ran horses at Golden Gate and acknowledges his coach is struggling with the closure. He additionally believes the success of some trainers, whereas creating stars for the game, additionally could also be hurting the industry.

“The reality with closing Golden Gate is none of those horses could really race in Southern California,” Gramm mentioned. “I don’t know what they can do to attract horses. They have some trainers and owners who are really committed to racing there, and I think that’s good. But the downside is the product isn’t as strong because as we have consolidation, you get races being dominated by two or three trainers.

“Every turf race is dominated by [Phil] D’Amato and every dirt race is [Bob] Baffert. If you have a baby there and they’re all running against three Bafferts, that’s not a good consumer product, right? That’s the problem everywhere.”

Gramm fears the answer to racing’s issues additionally could also be its eventual downfall.

“I’m not in love with alternative gaming supporting our industry,” Gramm mentioned. “I’m not in love with the fact that to make our industry go, we have to have some sort of manufactured monopoly and other gambling.

“It turns the racetrack and racetrack operators into people who end up seeking government aid. They care less about their customers in building a good product than they do about the government. And ultimately the tail wags the dog, the casino matters more and then they don’t even care about racing.”

Gramm additionally notes subsidies solely help trainers and house owners and never the average horse participant.

“The slots players are Band-Aids because they’re not going to be horse players,” Gramm mentioned. “And the days of the numbers players coming and playing the horses or dogs doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe if it can tip the scales in the right direction and help turn those subsidies into helping horse players and making a better product, then I still think it’s a tough long-run proposition unless you get people playing the product.”

Gramm understands predicting the longer term is a idiot’s sport.

“Five years is short, but what will the sport look like in 20 years, 25 years?” he mentioned. “Are we just racing in Kentucky and Arkansas? Are we just racing in red states? I don’t know, and that’s what worries me with everything that we want to try to do. I don’t know if minds can be changed with the prevailing direction that we’re going. So much about everything can change, I mean, are people going to be eating meat in 30 years?”

It’s tough to discover somebody actually bullish concerning the sport. Even these most optimistic concerning the future have some trepidation.

“I can’t imagine a racing world without California,” mentioned Lisa Lazarus, chief govt of HISA, an group that is going through legal challenges to its constitutionality that additionally might put it out of business in 5 years or much less. Two U.S. appeals courts ruled in a different way on the constitutionality of HISA, leaving its future in a state of flux. The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t embrace the difficulty on its docket for the present session.

“Everybody believes California is critical to the ecosystem,” Lazarus mentioned. “There are some very smart people out there, so I have full confidence that they’re going to find a way to bring in supplemental income.”

Lazarus is not the primary to offer a suggestion primarily based on cooperation among the many tracks and states, who usually have an interest solely in benefiting their own pursuits. Occasionally they get collectively, reminiscent of not too long ago when the New York Racing Assn. and Churchill Downs Inc. mixed to sue HISA over the prices it fees states. NYRA not too long ago settled; CDI didn’t.

Jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. celebrates within the winner’s circle after driving Mystik Dan to win the a hundred and fiftieth operating of the Kentucky Derby horse race at Churchill Downs on May 4 in Louisville, Ky.

(Jeff Roberson/AP)

“Everyone knows that things can’t stay the way they are, just fighting for survival,” Lazarus mentioned. “I don’t think it’s currently possible under Kentucky law now, but I think it’s so important to the ecosystem that you could potentially see some other jurisdictions sort of stepping in to supplement California.

“This is all theoretical because right now the KTDF [Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund] is restricted to Kentucky. But if there was flexibility to send purse money elsewhere, then they could consider it because they have so much purse money in there.”

Donna Barton Brothers, a former jockey and at the moment an NBC analyst who is all the time the primary particular person to interview the profitable jockey of the Kentucky Derby from her horse, sees either side to the argument for Kentucky bailing out California purses.

“You’ve got legislators in Kentucky, like state Sen. Damon Thayer and House Speaker David Osborne, who have fought really hard for where Kentucky is right now,” Brothers mentioned. “And then they look at California and go, ‘What are the legislators doing there? What are the lobbyists doing there? What are the racetracks doing to work with the lobbyists to work with the legislators to make that happen in California?’ So why does all the stuff that we’ve worked for now have to be used to subsidize California racing?’

“On the flip side, is Keeneland going to be able to have a $1.46-billion economic impact if you don’t have people in California interested in buying horses from the Keeneland sales?”

Brothers’ hypothetical concerning the California legislature does bear a re-evaluation. For probably the most half, politicians in California have achieved little to assist the racing industry, as an alternative focusing more on horse security than horse racing.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein each have been outspoken during the 2019 disaster of horse deaths at Santa Anita.

“How are we going to get Sacramento to like horse racing?” coach Bob Baffert requested rhetorically whereas talking on a panel in Tucson with fellow Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher.

“It’s such a big state and that question is something I wish I had the answer to. Unless we can find some other way to increase the purses, like Churchill Downs, Oaklawn, New York, [we’ve got difficulties]. What California has to offer is the weather, it’s a great place to get horses ready and it comes down to how can we get California to like horse racing?”

So, right here everybody in California horse racing sits. A collection of identifiable issues with some potential options however seemingly not enough motion to remedy these issues. Racing executives within the state say they’re engaged on it however decline to communicate publicly about it, leaving the horsemen shaking their heads in frustration.

“We need as an industry for California to succeed,” mentioned Pletcher, the coach who spoke on a panel alongside Baffert. “It’s great what’s going on in Kentucky with the purses but it’s having a negative effect on the other states because the purse structure is so high in some places yet in California they don’t have those advantages with a declining horse population.”

Louis Cella and his household are behind one of racing’s most profitable tales. The house owners of Arkansas’ Oaklawn Park have been the primary to put historic horse racing machines at their monitor. The facility does a great native business and holds outstanding races. But even Cella sees the chance for achievement in California as restricted.

“You look at California and unless they come with a solution to increase purses, I don’t think they survive in five years,” Cella mentioned. “I don’t see how that happens or at least on the level they are currently running at. I think they have a tremendous headwind in front of them.”

Racing leaders in California, beneath the guise of the Horse Power Coalition, funded a survey concerning the affect of horses on the state financial system. The survey was despatched out shortly after it was introduced that Golden Gate was closing.

It was timed to be a complement to the national American Horse Council Economic Impact Study. A information convention was scheduled within the paddock of Santa Anita to boast concerning the alleged $11.6-billion financial affect, as decided by the self-funded examine.

The information convention was rapidly canceled when no media confirmed up to cowl the announcement.

Is that occasion emblematic of the state of and curiosity in horse racing in California, or simply dangerous advertising?