How Monmouth Park's COVID-free 2020 positioned it for 2021

Monmouth Park might be the healthiest track in North America.

As tracks across the country grappled with COVID outbreaks large and small during 2020, Monmouth Park had not one reported case.

There is a good explanation for that. As chairman and CEO Dennis Drazin noted in an interview with HRN, the New Jersey track was “in a different position than most tracks because we’re a seasonal venue.”

When the pandemic struck, he said, “We did not already have people on our backside. We didn’t have employees there. We were doing our sports book business and we were running the race track for whatever simulcasting was available. But we didn’t have the concern of, 'How many cases do we have on our backside?'”

That allowed track officials, specifically medical director Dr. Angelo Chinnici, time and leeway to set up protocols carefully.

“People couldn’t get on the backside, owners were not permitted on the backside, trainers couldn’t ship in without handing off their horses,” Drazin said. “And we were really careful. We took temp checks on any fan that wanted to come into the racetrack once we were permitted to have fans.”

The steps paid off. Monmouth had no reported cases of COVID.

The track’s 2020 opening was delayed from May 2 to July 3 with 500 fans allowed initially.

“Then, within short order, the governor’s office – through working very closely with us – increased our number to 4,000 people,” Drazin said. “I think we’re the only racetrack in the country that had that kind of access for our fans.”

As a result, Drazin said, “projections, which were conservative going into the meet, were exceeded.”

Drazin said track officials projected about $15 million in generated revenue for purses just from race wagering. But the track ended up closer to $25 million, he said, which was about the same as last year. That included a state subsidy of $10 million that will be reduced to $7.5 million for 2021.

Monmouth’s average overall handle rose 20.81 percent from a year earlier to $3.8 million. And, Drazin said, “We did OK with sports betting.”

All of this “indicates to me we’ll have a strong meet” in 2021, Drazin said, with the caveat that much depends on the pandemic.

"Right now we have been OK’d for 4,000, but Monmouth Park holds over 60,000 people,” he said. “Whether we’ll be 25 percent, 50 percent, I can’t predict that, because we have to wait until May and see what happens. If we have setbacks – and I don’t mean Monmouth Park, I mean if the country has setbacks – then things might be a little tighter.”

Meanwhile, Drazin expects the track will continue to venture into fixed-odds wagering after offering it in 2018 and 2019 on its signature event, the Haskell Stakes (G1). Legislation to authorize such betting is working its way through the New Jersey legislature, and Drazin said, “I’m sure that by the time Monmouth opens this year, we’ll be set to launch.”

Drazin also sees opportunities with sports betting in New Jersey, which reached $6 billion in handle in 2020 – up 31 percent from 2019.  The total in December alone was $996.3 million.

And he does not see sports betting cannibalizing racing revenue – quite the opposite, especially with the pandemic.

"The horseplayers that bet with us on horse racing, I think a large group of them were betting sports anyway," he said. "And we find that, particularly with sports being down during the pandemic that a lot of those players were looking to bet whatever they could bet. So you had people betting Russian ping-pong, Korean baseball, whatever kind of appetite they had for sports, they were betting. And we found a lot of people crossing over, where they were only betting sports before, and now with an opportunity to bet racing when they couldn’t bet sports, they were betting with both hands."

Besides the additional revenue stream provided by sports betting, he sees evolving opportunities for cross-marketing with professional teams and leagues.

In a move that could have a substantial impact, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of neighboring New York has proposed allowing mobile sports betting in his state. A report released last year indicates that about 20 percent of New Jersey sports wagering comes from New York City.

Drazin said such a move would have more of an impact on the Meadowlands, which is closer to New York City, than on Monmouth Park.

"The (New Jersey) Division of Gaming Enforcement has a big board down at their offices where you can see who’s making what wagers from where." he said. "So you’ll see bicycles driving halfway across the bridge, making a bet and going back."

But he said such a loss would be offset at least in part by the rapid growth in New Jersey sports betting overall.

Another expected improvement for Monmouth Park from last year is that the meet is expected to start on time, around Memorial Day, with horses coming in around May 1.

“And I expect our horse colony to be stronger than last year,” Drazin said, "although it was very strong last year, we had a lot a horses.”