Finley @ ESPN: Good times are over
 

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/hor...ill&id=6099620

Excerpt: "The sport has had a nice run with slot machines, those gizmos that have fattened purses, made a lot of owners a lot of money and kept a dozen or so racetracks from closing. But the good times are about to end, and a lot sooner than you might have thought.


A system -- broke state governments allowing tens of millions in slots revenue to go to horse racing -- that could never last is starting to crumble."

Has to happen.

I can't find a roll-eyes smiley big enough for this nonsense.

Everyone seems to associate $ with education, the worst public schools in the country are the ones with the highest budgets. Throwing loot at a problem doesn't solve it, especially when the recipients have no idea what to do with it.

"And shouldn't some of the slots money have been used for something other than purses? Why not huge marketing campaigns or massive reductions in takeout? Have any Racinos invested in capital improvements for the racetracks and not just the slots parlors?"

Another example of the lazy journalism or just plain stupidity.

Finley acts as though the slot money is split solely between the purses and the state. So the tracks (which are usually the party that attends to marketing and capital improvements) shouldn't use their cut of the pie to increase their marketing budgets or improve their facilities? The state which reaps the benefits of slots with virtually no investment shouldn't contribute to racing via takeout reduction coming from their cut of the pie which is vastly diminished in importance with the onset of casino money?

While I agree it is incredibly short-sighted to not address the takeout, marketing and facilities, the idea that these are the responsibilities of the horseman is idiotic. The states have been handed billions of dollars over the years from racing and the tracks with racinos are making money hand over fist and they are only doing so because of horseracing.

Most owners are still losing money and the insinuation that we are running for "too much" money is usually made by those who have never actually had to pay to breed, raise or race a horse.

We all know that racing has done a terrible job setting itself up politically both nationally and on the state level. We all know that the contributions made by horseracing are routinely overlooked by politicians. We all know that most states are broke and desperate for cash. But the continued insinuation that the slot money that goes to purses somehow is wrong or bad for horseracing is based far more in idiocy and jealousy than fact or reality.

Slot money is like great sex it felt the best right before it was over..

'Meanwhile, racing has done nothing to help itself, particularly when it comes to getting the dynamics of supply and demand to work again. Greatly reduce the total number of racing dates out there and the sport's financial outlook wouldn't look quite so bleak. But no one seems to want to do that, not when it's so easy to run bad horses for good money at Racinos.
'

I have frequently asked the question which tracks should reduce dates and or close. So far I have never heard any advocate of racing suggest which tracks should contract.

"Have any Racinos invested in capital improvements for the racetracks and not just the slots parlors?"

Philly Park has had plenty of years of not doing much, but I thought the first and third floors were well done in their remake and I think most players would agree with that assessment. I would call them some capital improvements.

"Most owners are still losing money and the insinuation that we are running for "too much" money is usually made by those who have never actually had to pay to breed, raise or race a horse."

Ahmen. So Cuomo wants a 2.75% surcharge on purses in NY. You win a race, it does not mean you are turning a profit. What a shake down.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...er=rss&emc=rss

The idea that tracks closing will make things better is based on faulty logic.

Let's say Ellis Park, Turfway Prk, Mountaineer, Suffolk, Thistle/Beulah/River, Penn National and Prarie Meadows all close tomorrow. All are either on shaky ground or are operated by groups that probably wouldnt mind axing racing. Ok so please tell me how this makes racing better?

How many racino's has Finley actually been to before and after?

Gulfstream has made the ultimate capital improvement.

Tioga Downs was racing snowmobiles and had flea markets for crying out loud . Now it's a state of the art harness track with casino owned by Jeff Gural. And he resurrected Vernon Downs too. It's jobs jobs jobs.

Couldn't agree more, that place is something. When we visit Florida, I no longer have to ask to go, she wants to go there.

The entire building at Louisiana Downs was given a face lift when Harrah's came in. I'd hate to see what it would like if they didn't...

face it, the good times were over the minute racing NEEDED slot money. someone asks how the closing of tracks will be helpful to racing....its simple there are too many tracks (supply) and not enough betting (demand) to make it worth it....thats why tracks count on this vlt money. i'm from the era when tracks did fine on their own merit and product.......NYRA originally wanted nothing to do with VLT's. the fact that tracks need this revenue shows there is a problem. economics is not rocket science....when the herd is too big, the weak will fall....thats just nature. racing will HAVE to streamline or ALL the tracks will be gone. the ones that survive will be stronger if this happens. With all the VLT action going on, eventually they will see the same fate....how many VLT centers can be built and survive...they will have an awakening too....many times MORE is not BETTER. the politicians don't see horse racing as "too big to fail" so don't hold your breath for a government bailout.

From prior experience I know Indian Charlie (the poster, not the horse) understands how a market economy is supposed to work. But past that I am not seeing much evidence of it around here.

So, YEE HAW, bring on the welfare!

Better the next day or better in 5 years? In 5 years it would be 1000 times better.

I'd love to see your business model for that.

It seems to me that government siphoning off huge dollars from our sport to lavish funds on the "education" establishment is the biggest problem . Governmental interference in the free flow of business is the biggest culprit.

Don't all business's pay substantial tax on profits?

Small businesses like mine are pretty much in business to pay taxes and insurance.

The 2.75% surcharge on purses in NY has nothing to do with profits.

No. While officially the US has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world (35%) in practice there are so many loopholes and politicians willing to be bought off that many of our large corporations pay very little tax. GE, for example, paid 3.6% in taxes:

http://www.minyanville.com/dailyfeed...ing-corporate/

Companies like Wal Mart pay more in federal tax than GE, as they have a much smaller overseas presence, but they have some effective strategies for reducing what they owe in state tax. Corporate taxes levied by the states average about 7 percent, and Wal Mart pays, on average, about half of that.

http://www.uic.edu/classes/actg/actg...ate%20Taxes%20[Q].htm

I'm not trying to open up an argument on the US corporate tax rate; I just get really irritated when the mainstream media yammers about the highest corporate tax rate in the world without also yammering about what is the effective rate corporations actually pay. As always, theory is very different from practice.

The company that I work for had two good years in a row. Taxes paid were around 21% the first year and 24% the second. That's only federal.

How? There have been lots of tracks that have closed in the last 15-20 years, Atlantic City, Hialeah, Longacres, Sportsmans, Rockingham, Garden State, Bowie...how did those track closing make things better?

The idea that reducing exposure in large metropolitan area's is going to lead to an expansion in the sport's fan/gambler base is a dubious one.

Since when is takeout considered profit?

Corporations didn't write the tax codes

http://m.daytondailynews.com/dayton/...ex=0&pn=0&ps=8

LOL. Dayton Downs

As it always is. The money goes to the hungry bureaucracy, which in the end cannot guarantee anything in terms of results.

i.e. "If we get $100 million more, I GUARANTEE little Johnny will know his times tables!" He'll still be driven to school in a school bus that hasn't changed in design in 80 years, too. He might not even get a new textbook, but the union will be happy...until next year anyway.

It might be and I don't profess to KNOW that reducing racing will work but I have a feeling that it would. Of course, that alone won't do it but in conjunction with a few other ideas, I think it would really help. I look out there and it just seems there is so much bad product. There's an over-saturation going on. I think that reducing the number of opportunities out there would go a long way in increasing the quality of what we do see, a sort of "only the strong survive" kind of result. Setting up a national schedule would also help. There has to be a way of getting racing to be an event again, something that people look forward too and not just another day, where, other than the stakes race you might get on a Saturday or Sunday, all of the days and races just seem to blend into each other.

I look at this past weekend of racing and this one coming up. At Santa Anita, you had the San Antonio and the Strub. There's no longer a need for both. This weekend brings the La Canada and the Santa Maria, with several cross-entered and the result will be two weaker races when it could have been one strong one. You've got top California 2yo Comma To the Top running at Golden Gate instead of at SA against Tapizar and other in the Lewis. If GG weren't in existence anymore, that option wouldn't be there. Take away Sunland so that their slot subsidized Derby wouldn't take potential competitors away from SA also. Twenty years ago, Lookin at Lucky would have returned from the Preakness in either the Jim Dandy or Haskell as a prep for the Travers. Now they've got races like the WV Derby and the Indiana Derby and the Penn Derby and as a result, top competition keeps getting spread out and the quality of the races is weaker.

I do realize that from your perspective and others that actually make a living in the business, the prospect of closing tracks and reducing racing, going to a less is more way of operating, would have a negative impact. I get that and I feel for those that it would affect. At the same time, as a fan, I want to see the best possible product and the current way of doing things seems to be going in the opposite direction of putting out the best product.

I don't know if this analogy is right for this conversation but imagine if major league baseball said they were going to contract and get rid of the White Sox, Angels, Mets, and A's..........and all of their players would go to the Cubs, Dodgers, Yankees, and Giants, respectively. A lot of players would lose their jobs but the resulting teams would be better. If at the same time, they got rid of the Expos, Marlins, Rays, Royals, Pirates, and Brewers and all of their players went to existing teams, I can't help but think that the quality of the game would improve. We see how bad some of those fourth and fifth starters are on some of the teams now. There are plenty of guys that have jobs now that honestly don't need them and only have them because there are so many spots. Sort of like how we have so many horses that become graded stakes winners simply because someone has to win the races.

You like so many others have confused the issue.

First off most of the tracks that I listed have very few stakes of consequence so their elimination won't make much difference in the national stakes schedule.
Secondly even though the product may not be very good at many of these tracks the lack of quality has zero effect on what goes on at the bigger tracks. There is no relation between what happens Penn National and what happens at Gulfstream or Santa Anita.

Third, racing has been fairly mundane forever. The idea that everyday of racing in the 50's was like Derby day is false. Sure the attendance used to be huge but we were the only game in town. Look at the attendance at Bowie when they first started winter racing. People used to take the train to from NYC to bet $2500 claimers. Not because the racing was any good, but because it was all they had. People forget that the stacking of stakes on one day is a fairly new deal as well.

Fourth, virtually everyone agrees that it is very hard to create fans/gamblers without some live racing experience. Eliminating live racing in entire regions of the country including some of the biggest metropolitan areas would seem to work counter to the principles of creating new interest in the sport.

Fifth, I don't know why anyone outside of casino operators feels that casino/slots money supporting racing in many area's is such a bad thing. I mean isn't it better that they use portion of their massive windfall which were gained by piggybacking onto the industry to "dance with the one you brung"? I'm not going to rehash all the positive economic attributes of horseracing but I feel pretty confident that the state and local economies are better served by a portion of that money being given back to racing interests than to a huge corporations coffers or worse to be wasted on boondoggles by politicians.

My being "in" the industry has no effect on my feelings on this subject. If the elimination of these tracks really was a positive thing I would be all for it. Believe me we aren't all one big family. I could care less about the horseman in OH. Most of us dont even like each other very much. But I still dont see how closing tracks is a good thing.

If Drugs and IC remember, they can tell you that I advocated less racing LONG ago. More racing is not better racing. Most of the ills of racing can be traced to "more racing". When racing was one of the big three sports in the US (with baseball and boxing), there wasn't even any winter racing up north. You are never going to return to those days, of course, but the idea that "more" is somehow automatically indicative of a "better" game is obviously disproved by history.

When an area is logged out, you just don't need as many loggers around. We don't need as many horse people, period. No one is guaranteed a lifetime profession in a capitalist society. The goal should be to preserve what is best, and lose the rest.

How many races were contested in 1990 vs. 2011?

Well you my have advocated this but I hate to inform you but it hasn't exactly worked out well. You see there is this little detail that racing HAS contracted quite a bit over the last 20 years and the results have not exactly been promising. In 1989 there were 74071 races run in the US. In 2009 there were 49368. That would be...alot less racing yet everyone keeps saying we need less, we need less. You know what happens when you race less? Yeah thats right, nothing. The problem isnt too many horse people...

A whole lot less...




in 2010

You are comparing eras when demand was fundamentally different, and it is the demand side you seem to have no clue about.

In 1989, outside of NV, AC and some low-limit card rooms in SoCal, what exactly was racing's competition for the gambling dollar? Dogs--a vastly inferior form of racing? Jai Alai in FL and CT? We didn't even have a lottery until 1988!

Dude, the gaming market changed COMPLETELY in that period. We have way, WAY too much racing for this market. If the government went "hands off"--taxed all gambling equally, did NOT require racinos to maintain racing, did NOT require purses supplemented by other forms of gambling--horse racing would be slaughtered in a free market today.

Wake up, man.

There are 25000 less races than in 1989. Dont you think THAT is a response to the market?

Do you seriously think reducing the scope of the industry is going to influence govt in a positive manner?

We all know that we are basically held hostage by racinos and effect govt. But what you are saying is that the hostage committing suicide is a better option than being held hostage.

The problem is that the price of this form of gambling is not competitive in the market place. Reducing the number of tracks or races doesn't change this.

And, PS, I did not even address simulcasting, which was virtually unknown back in '89.

Let's see--so on a nice summer day now I can bet SAR, DMR, ARL or MTH. Or I can bet my local dinky track, Crap Meadows, like my grandpa did. Hmmm...

WTF--influence govt? Govt is floating racing in most places, to "save jobs" (aka welfare). My point to you is the opposite--it needs to conform to the market, which the government should withdraw from.

Maybe a handful of states need to really be breeding states--propping up Iowa, or Indiana, or NJ, or a bunch of other bogus breeding states is
BS. Never would happen in a free market.