Q&A: NYRA’s O’Rourke on Saratoga, Pick 6, sports betting

Anticipation is high for the 40-day meet that opens at Saratoga on Thursday and will feature 76 stakes races worth $21.5 million in purses. There will be a return to full capacity after the pandemic forced the New York Racing Association to host last year’s summer stand without spectators.

David O’Rourke, NYRA’s president and chief executive officer since March 2019, discussed that development and a wide range of issues as part of a question-and-answer session conducted on behalf of Horse Racing Nation.

He also shed light on NYRA’s possible involvement in sports wagering, upcoming renovations at Belmont Park, hope for joining the Breeders’ Cup rotation and the possible addition of sports to the betting menu.

What does it mean to the New York Racing Association to be able to operate the Saratoga meet at full capacity?

It means everything. After the year everyone had, the ability to operate under normal conditions is a blessing, and we’re looking forward to it, and we’re thankful for it. It’s a result of a lot of hard work. New York’s vaccination rate is at 70 percent, so we’re thankful.

What is the New York Racing Association doing to ensure that Saratoga remains the premier summer meet? How do you keep that position?

By putting on the best racing not only in the country but I would challenge anywhere in the world. That’s always been the formula, right? It’s not just about the race card that day. It’s about the facilities behind it. One of the things we invested in this year was the Oklahoma (training) track. Saratoga is a big training facility for us. We’ve had babies up there for a few months now. We focus quite a bit on that side of the equation.

The average field size at Saratoga is down 9 percent for the last four years. Does that raise concerns?

This year I think we’re headed, in terms of handle, I’d take the “over” on our record, and that relates to field size. Sometimes it’s circumstantial. With a lot of Kentucky folks coming over because of the work at Churchill, I think we’re going to bolster field size with the numbers coming in, and we’ll see if some of that sticks. It might be a new experience for some of these trainers, and we think we offer one of the best experiences and one of the best opportunities in racing.

How would you describe your relationship with Fox, and what that relationship means to the New York Racing Association and the sport in general?

We’ve had a relationship with Fox for several years now, and we also have a business partnership on the ADW side. It helped us position racing into the more casual sports base. With sports betting coming along, that’s important. Never more so. The value of it I think was apparent last year (during the pandemic). That was the way we were distributing our product on television, and the numbers were strong. I think we gained a lot of new viewers through that. I know we gained a lot of new ADW account holders. All of the ADWs benefit from this. We think this is a great thing for the industry. We are very happy that a lot of the tracks participate with us, Churchill specifically. We think it only strengthens our brand and the public perception of our sport.

You’ve been searching for the right formula for the Pick 6 the last couple of years. What has been going on there?

I think we’ve got it right this time. We had the $2 Pick 6, and then the industry moved toward low-base jackpots, so we gave that a try. But in doing that we sort of alienated some of our traditional Pick 6 players. We think in landing at $1 is a sweet spot. It seems to be working. People seem to be quite happy with it.

Are you encouraged by the growth of NYRA Bets?

Very much so. Encouraged in that it’s a necessity. The way people interact with the product on a retail level, it’s with a mobile device. NYRA Bets has been very successful as we’ve expanded outside of New York. It’s dominant inside of New York, and aligning that with the television positioned it perfectly for really expanding our audience. Now the next question is how do sportsbooks play into this equation? I can see a future where sportsbooks, we might marry that with NYRA Bets. It becomes a business-to-business product where we provide pari-mutuel content to some of these new distributors that are cropping up everywhere.

You anticipated my next question. Does NYRA hope to be involved with sports wagering?

We’re not going to be a license holder, but we view this as a huge opportunity. The sports-betting platforms are spending a lot of money on marketing to acquire customers, and they have a broad-based product that appeals to a lot of different people, basically every other sport besides horse racing. So we view the opportunity as potentially partnering with them to gain exposure to their customers. In that equation we could be putting our product in front of 10, 20, 30 times what it currently is in the ADW format, so that is huge.

Can the hockey arena being built for the New York Islanders next to Belmont Park help your business?

Absolutely. It will be interesting when it opens, because you never actually know what it’s going to be like until you experience it. But it’s definitely going to bring traffic to the site, and it opens a lot of other opportunities. Not only that, but there is a lot of infrastructure involved with the arena, specifically a train station that will have a full-time, dedicated rail line, which will be a big deal. I can’t emphasize that enough. We’re at the beginning of the evolution of this entire campus, and it starts with that arena.

What is the future of Belmont Park?

What I see happening here is we will always race at Saratoga, but otherwise we will be year-round at Belmont. Belmont is important in a lot of ways. It is our training hub, and it’s the largest training facility on the East Coast. I think our first focus here will be the racing surfaces. That is one of the challenges here with running year-round. The turf tracks are due to be re-done, so we’re looking at that in the near term, near term being in the next year or so.

Once work is done at Belmont Park, would any of that be done with an eye toward becoming part of the Breeders’ Cup rotation?

Absolutely. That is one of the goals.

Why is that important?

It’s important for our horsemen. The horsemen in this region should have it on their home track every so often. The other piece of it would be this is the largest market in the United States. I think it would be good for our industry to have it back at Belmont Park.