Thursday Notes

Jennie Rees makes some great points about the Arlington experiment to tie field size to purse size. It will be interesting to see if AP makes some changes as time goes on with this experiment. h/t to Equidaily.

The dominoes keep falling: Hastings lowers take and now has the best WPS rake on the continent. I am not sure about 2011 in this industry, but I am 100% sure national handle will be up solidly in 2012. Too many tracks are finally coming to realize that customers need to be cultivated, not sucked dry. Bettors bet more when they have more in their pockets.

Try and try again: Western Fair, who lowered their win 4 takeout to 15% has also offered a guarantee. 

No Cam Fella start for the undefeated St. Elmo Hero this weekend as he has spiked a temp.

World Series of Backgammon? Yes, I checked that out over at R2.

Ferguson has a look at Betfair and their bid to buy Monmouth Park, which may or may not be happening. This is probably one of the better developments we have seen in awhile. If they took both Monmouth and the Meadowlands, those two tracks would get a ton of play. Being featured on their channel is a big thing. Perhaps it won't be long before Matt says (like all the telecasts do now in the UK and Australia) "the seven is taking no action and is 9-1 at Betfair, while 4-1 on the board". That's some killer exchange branding.

Dan over at Thorotrends released the results of his first ever survey into thoroughbred racing. There were some neat results and some cool questions. I was struck by the age demo for the survey. Being primarily online, we seem to get a bit of a boost on younger fans/bettor demos. Check it out.

Dan asked a question on the Players Boycott of Cali Racing, which I and many of you share support. That question showed some results which I was a little surprised about. The data pool was extremely broad, yet it seems there was good recognition of it, and some support.

HANA's Harness Survey was chatted about on the HANA blog this week as well. The results are pretty much what we expect, and chat about here on the blog. Rake is too high, too many supertrainers coming out of the woodwork and winning at 30%, pool size is too small.

The funny thing to me is the cause and effect of that, and the spiral. Rake is high, so handle goes down and we have small pools. Supertrainers winning at 2-5 dropping horses and claiming new ones providing zero betting-value makes handle go down and pools be too small. In the past, some tracks (to combat falling revenues) raise takeout to "make up the difference". Then handle goes down again, and we have even smaller pool size. Racing is one of the levels in Inception.

Allan checks out some of the results at VFTRG.

North America Cup eligibles have been released. Last year looked like a solid year for the three year olds, but it ended up being nowhere near expectation. This year looks like a weaker group. Maybe the opposite will happen.

Jessica reports that the fight between the horsemen and Suffolk is close to over.  Who wants to bet that the deal signed protects the status quo? I'll give you 10-1.

CDI does not want to sell their signals easily. Gee, wonder why.