Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Last Kentucky Downs Card Today, and Santa Anita Raises Takeout

Good day horse racing peeps!

Kentucky Downs puts on their last card today. As usual, there are some good betting races, and 113 drew in before scratches. It looks like the meet will be up for the third year in a row - and not by a tiny amount. Doug has a synopsis on their handle this meet here.

On the flipside, Santa Anita announced their betting menu for the upcoming meet and it includes a 2% takeout hike for their daily double pools from 18% to 20%.

One track is going the right way; the other hopes you don't notice.

The two largest entities in racing which own the most tracks are Magna and CDI. Both have shown a willingness to increase takeout, or offer pools that are egregious to betting bankrolls, like the Rainbow Six. Although my Frank-love for some of his proactive measures on horse welfare and medication is documented (I might even change my twitter avatar to my favorite Austrian-Canadian auto magnate again), we sure see some short-sightedness on all-important pricing.

Being a customer is hard. And any companies, or tracks that make it even harder, are doing a disservice to the game. Racing must make it easier to be a customer, and until that happens the obvious will occur: Racing will continue to lose them.

Have a great day folks!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

How much say in the takeout increase did Santa Anita have? I remember that when they did it at Del Mar it was forced onto them by the CHRB, who said it would carry over to Los Alamitos and Santa Anita

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