Gulfstream trends down as December U.S. handle is up

The first Friday of December marked not only the beginning of the championship meeting at Gulfstream Park but also a new era of late autumn racing as Oaklawn Park conducts dates for the first time in generations to help usher in the busiest period of early December racing in years.

How much that change in schedule has to do with changes in bettor behavior is a matter for conjecture, but it is impossible to ignore a trend of fewer dollars being bet on Gulfstream since the start of the meeting through Dec. 20.

For the sake of comparison, all business figures in this report are for the 17 days from the first Friday of December each year.

In 2020, Gulfstream Park commanded more than a quarter of the U.S. Thoroughbred wagering market, with $118,067,516 bet the first 13 days of the meeting covering the aforementioned 17-day period. Total U.S. handle was $462,939,156.

This year, Gulfsteram Park has handled $101,210,439, which is 20.20 percent of the $501,050,141 in total handle. Put another way, all-sources handle is up 8.23 percent since Gulfstream opened, but handle at Gulfstream itself is down 14.28 percent.

So what gives? The three biggest factors appear to be:

• More interest in Aqueduct

• Oaklawn now running

• The Tapeta surface at Gulfstream is new to horseplayers

Aqueduct is up 22.85 percent on one more race date and six more races. The increase in handle from $82,396,120 to $102,054,146 is by far the biggest of the 17 tracks that have run similar dates in both 2020 and 2021.

“I credit a few things: turf racing through early December, some nice carryovers, a good product and extended coverage on Fox,” said Tony Allevato, chief revenue officer of the New York Racing Association and president of NYRA Bets who also serves as executive producer of NYRA’s broadcast on Fox.

“The racing office has done a good job of putting together competitive cards, and we extended our coverage on Fox beyond Cigar Mile day,” Allevato said. “It’s never one single thing that leads to this kind of success.”

One of NYRA’s partners on the Fox broadcast is Oaklawn Park, which – like Gulfstream – opened on Friday, Dec. 3. Oaklawn has conducted nine dates and handled $46,985,484. That’s 9.38 percent of the market, meaning the two tracks on the Fox broadcast are 29.58 percent of the market, which is about a point more than this time in 2019, when Gulfstream was 29.05% percent of the market with $114,615,026 of the $413,568,169 wagered.

“We were are very pleased with our numbers, being this was our first opportunity in decades to provide live racing in December,” Oaklawn general manager Wayne Smith said. “I’d like to thank our equine athletes, owners, trainers and jockeys for their participation. Also our fans and team for embracing these new dates.”

“Oaklawn has become an excellent part of the Fox shows,” Allevato said. “They work with us to keep our races off each other, and it’s just great to see that kind of cooperation. I’m biased because TV is my background, but as we’ve seen with sports, people like to bet what they can watch and we’re seeing that with horse racing. It hasn’t happened overnight, but we’re seeing the growth from people who turned in during the pandemic, and the handle figures compared to 2019 are very encouraging.”

The biggest change at Gulfstream is the addition of the Tapeta synthetic track as a third surface there. Gulfstream has conducted at least 131 races across 13 race days in each of the past three seasons. In 2019, when the market share was an astounding 28.43 percent, the track had 86 dirt races and 50 turf. Last year, the split was 61 dirt and 74 turf. This year it’s 58 dirt, 43 synthetic, and only 30 turf.

Speaking at the University of Arizona’s Race Track Industry Program’s Symposium on Racing, 1/st Racing CEO Craig Fravel said that Gulfstream was pleased with early handle trends involving synthetic races, but several bettors have taken to Twitter to complain about the sequencing of races involving the synthetic surface. Indeed, same-race handle is down only 1 percent, but multi-race handle is down 41 percent.

Aqueduct

2021: $102,054,146  (20.2%)

2020: $82,396,120 (17.8%)

2019: $75,822,684 (21.9%)

Gulfstream

2021: $101,210,439 (20.2%)

2020: $118,067,516 (25.5%)

2019: $114,615,026 (29.0%)

Oaklawn

2021: $46,985,484 (9.3%)

2020: Did not race

2019: Did not race

All tracks total:

2021: $501,050,141

2020: $462,939,156

2019: $413,568,169

Data compiled from Equibase charts from the first Friday of December each year through the third Sunday of December that same year.