Strong out of gate, but success not assured

While it’s good news for Monmouth Park Racetrack that its new season opened strong out of the gate, there are still two big unknowns for the Oceanport facility and the state’s thoroughbred industry.

While it’s good news for Monmouth Park Racetrack that its new season opened strong out of the gate, there are still two big unknowns for the Oceanport facility and the state’s thoroughbred industry.

Negotiations between developer Morris Bailey, who has a tentative agreement for a five-year lease of the track, and the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association have not yet been finalized. And it’s unknown how bettors will react to the track’s decision to reverse course on the huge purses it offered last season.
What is certain, is that this season will be very different from last year, though that’s not to say 2011 won’t also be a success.

The May 14 opening day drew 10,000 people — off from the 17,000 that came last year, but a number Bill Knauf, assistant general manager for Monmouth Park, said was respectable considering the relatively early start, two weeks before Memorial Day.
“We were very pleased with the crowds for the first few weekends,” Knauf said.

Instead of comparing it to 2010, track operators compared attendance to 2009, when purses were similar in value. Measured against 2009, the opening day crowd was 5.4 percent higher, with total betting up 6 percent. The amount wagered during the park’s first two weekends was $4.4 million, with slightly less than half bet on races at the track and simulcast races.

Daily purses have dropped more than 50 percent from the $1 million-per-day prizes over the 50 days of the summer season in 2010, with early dates offering $450,000 prizes — though Bailey has proposed $400,000 prizes for the long term. Neither Bailey nor his lawyer returned phone calls seeking comment.

The large purses were useful in attracting some of the country’s top horses and jockeys, and while that practice is ending, Knauf said some of those trainers will return to Monmouth this year, with their “second strings.”
“Obviously, the big purses were a huge attraction to get bettors who had never wagered on us before,” he said.

Those purses were partially made possible through subsidies from Atlantic City’s casinos, but last year saw the last of the subsidies, with purses now generated solely by the bets placed in the park and at off-track-wagering venues. The exception to the lower purses will be at the track’s premier event, the Haskell Invitational, on July 31.
While it’s not keeping the purses, the track plans to again offer 50 dates in the summer and 21 in the fall, concentrating races on weekends to better focus on its strengths.

Knauf said the track staff is hopeful that the transition to Bailey will go well.
“We look forward to the transition,” he said. “Hopefully, it will make Monmouth Park a better place.”
It’s essential that the horsemen and Bailey reach a settlement, said Barbara DeMarco, vice president of Porzio Governmental Affairs LLC, who resigned as the horsemen’s association’s lobbyist after 14 years, saying she disagreed with the positions the group was taking in the negotiations.

DeMarco represents TVG-Betfair, a California-based provider of phone and Internet betting on horse racing; the firm is in position to provide these services in New Jersey, along with Scientific Games Corp., of New York.
DeMarco said each part of the state’s horse industry depends on the others.
In the near term, “the thoroughbred horsemen could essentially shut down racing,” including the simulcast signal, she said, adding that standardbred racing at Meadowlands Racetrack also depends on thoroughbred betting.
In the long term, meanwhile, Monmouth Park’s success “will depend on what the other states around us are doing,” she said. DeMarco said the $400,000 purses proposed by Bailey “will certainly put us in the ballgame” — within $100,000 of the purses offered in neighboring Pennsylvania and Delaware.

But those states offer video lottery terminals — similar to slot machines — which are barred from New Jersey’s tracks. To overcome that limitation, DeMarco said, New Jersey needs to offer more “flavors” of horse betting, including building new facilities for off-track betting and starting the recently approved single-pool and exchange wagering.
“Right now, they offer the better vanilla. People don’t just want vanilla,” DeMarco said.

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