A Stop Horseracing Article from All-Creatures.org

Will California Horseracing Survive Without Corporate Welfare?

FROM HorseracingWrongs.org
March 2024

He’s talking, mind you, about one of Racing’s crown-jewel tracks. If storied Santa Anita can’t survive without 'supplemental forms of gaming income' – more accurately described as subsidies, corporate welfare – then, moving forward, what tracks can? Saratoga, Keeneland, Churchill, maybe Del Mar?

Last week, you may have heard, the California Horse Racing Board allocated 26 race dates to Pleasanton in Northern California. This, of course, is intended to partially make up for the dates that will be lost when Golden Gate closes for good in June. There are still some hurdles the horsemen must clear before these dates actually happen, but it looks as though, at least for this year, racing in the north will continue beyond fair season.

The Board’s decision came after a somewhat threatening letter was sent to them by The Stronach Group, owner of Santa Anita and San Luis Rey (their training facility). The argument (joined by Del Mar and Los Alamitos) is that Cal racing can no longer support two circuits, and that it should be consolidated in the south. If not, said the letter, “an analysis of alternative uses for Santa Anita and San Luis Rey will be undertaken in short order.” Those TSG’s properties are probably worth north of a billion, so maybe they’ll just sell and get out of California entirely (TSG also owns the soon-to-be-sold Golden Gate).

In an LA Times piece published ahead of Thursday’s meeting, John Cherwa wrote of Santa Anita, “[T]he land is valuable. Way more valuable than running horse races three days a week, seven months a year.” He went on to say: “The Stronach Group is private so there is no transparency into its finances. But it’s not difficult to deduce from the small crowds (despite inflated attendance figures on big days) and short racing fields that the track is struggling. Senior officials pointed to $31 million in operating losses over the last five years. All the tracks need supplemental forms of gaming income, such as Historical Horse Racing in Kentucky (slot machines pretending to be games of skill), to survive.”

Those parentheticals, by the way, are Cherwa’s, not mine. He continued: “The finances [selling] make sense, even if it means cutting loose a part of the family business in a sport that is in serious decline in a state that offers almost no incentives to stick around.”

Even if northern racing doesn’t continue beyond this year, Cherwa says the south will not necessarily be saved: “Sending simulcast money to the south is only a Band-Aid to a bigger problem. The purses are too small because there is no supplemental gaming money to help prop up the purses.”

He’s talking, mind you, about one of Racing’s crown-jewel tracks. If storied Santa Anita can’t survive without “supplemental forms of gaming income” – more accurately described as subsidies, corporate welfare – then, moving forward, what tracks can? Saratoga, Keeneland, Churchill, maybe Del Mar? I can’t think of any others. And, incidentally, those first three tracks do receive subsidies. So once again it comes to this: The vast majority of horseracing in America is moribund; we (Americans) don’t want it anymore. Are you listening state legislatures?

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