Carryover Madness

Yesterday we saw more with the power of carryovers and mandatory payouts. When money is added to a pool, the chance for a higher payoff and the chance to make a serious score increases. That's the big-pools lower takeout formula the sport needs (although the sport doesn't like you to know about the latter half of that equation).

The carryover at Saratoga in the pick 6 attracted $2.7 million, and paid $46,440.

The mandatory payout at Gulfstream attracted $2.0 million and paid $261,743.

The carryover at Del Mar attracted just over $1.0 million and paid $694,742.

In an Andy Beyer interview at the Horseplayer Monthly, he said 'I even play carryovers at Assinboia Downs'. Well they had a small $4,300 carryover in the Super High Five yesterday and handled over $44,000 on the bet.

The good news is a lot of people play these bets. The bad news is that almost 100% of them ended up losing. The money is spread around to very few, and churn doesn't happen.

The exact opposite happened during the Triple Crown season. With American Pharoah winning each leg, there was a lot of money in accounts come Sunday, and people rebet those Sunday's, Monday's and the following week. Today, I would submit there are a lot of bettors with no money in their accounts. Monday was great, but it will probably be a tough week.

Carryovers are nice, but in hard to hit bets, the sport cannot survive on them alone. 

Notes:

I love horse racing press releases. On twitter you'll often see a release tagged with a reference to Baghdad Bob. This Del Mar one did not disappoint:

"Del Mar's Strong Racing Product Fuels Successful Summer Meet"

"Daily average handle at Del Mar finished off at $12,151,518 for the 40 days. Last year’s 36-day stand saw the daily average at $12,295,175, meaning there was a 1.2% decline. On-track attendance for 2015 was off by 12%, averaging 14,558 for the 40 days as opposed to 16,535 for last year’s 36."

Imagine the title of the release if things were actually up.

Have a nice Tuesday everyone.