Monday, August 4, 2014

Data Bog In Full Court Press

Alan over at Left at the Gate has an interesting post up this weekend. It expounds on the Saratogian article "Season passes inflate track figures: Daily paid attendance includes 6,300-plus pass holders", about Saratoga attendance figures.
We wrote about racing, and racing policy, specifically about Saratoga attendance not long ago.

"Does raising admission fees at Saratoga matter? Who knows. NYRA has a built in excuse and it will be hard to measure its benefit or detriment to revenues either way. Internally they probably will, but if the policy looks like a dud it's unlikely they will broadcast it."

When racing makes decisions (in this case an admission fee increase, in others, a takeout hike), it seems the most important thing to racing is not the effect of such a policy (good or bad) from a business perspective, but what effect the decision has on the decision makers.

Let's hope, somehow, an accurate figure that helps racing understand the effect of an admission increase to forward the sports revenues and popularity comes out of this. Unless something radically changes, it looks like the chances of that are between slim and none.


1 comment:

Sal Carcia said...

On the Wednesday that week, Saratoga reported an attendance of around 8,000. If 4700 was subtracted, the attendance that day was closer to 3,000 or 4,000. If this is true, then Saratoga is experiencing a serious decline in its popularity. The NYRA cannot afford to ignore this apparent downturn.

Sadly, I don't think the increase in admission fees is the only problem.

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