Del Mar stays on bettors’ plates with brief fall-meet experiment
The Breeders’ Cup is over, but thoroughbred horse racing in Southern California continues in a new but familiar setting.
Del Mar, one of racing’s summertime jewels, will open its gates today for its fall meet. The San Diego-area track will run 15 days, including Thanksgiving, with a Hollywood-style vibe paying homage to Bing Crosby, who helped found the track in 1937. The meet has been named in his honor.
Del Mar is picking up some of the vacated racing dates from Hollywood Park, which closed in December. Del Mar will run on a Thursday through Sunday schedule, with closing day scheduled for Nov. 30. Post time will be 12:30 p.m. on weekdays, noon on weekends and 11 a.m. on Nov. 27 (Thanksgiving Day).
Joe Harper, Del Mar president and general manager, said he has no idea how fall racing will play out. In 1967, Del Mar had a 20-day fall meet that flopped, as attendance and handle were off more than 50 percent from the summer meet. There has been no fall meet since.
“I’m curious to see what happens,” he said. “This is going to be a learning year for us. But if we can do half of what we did in the summer in terms of handle and attendance, I’ll be happy.”
This year’s summer meet averaged $12,087,844 in overall handle, $2,174,588 of which was bet on-track. Average attendance was 16,535.
In Las Vegas, it figures to be business as usual in the race books. Horseplayers who regularly bet the Southern California circuit probably will not shy away from Del Mar. There will be enough quality races throughout the meet, including seven graded stakes races.
“I think it will do OK,” said John Avello the director of race and sports at Wynn Las Vegas. “There won’t be any competition, and Del Mar should have adequate fields. I would think it should do as well as Hollywood did.”
Harper said: “It’s very important that we put out a quality product, especially at the (mutuel) windows. Our purses will be higher than what they were at Santa Anita this fall, and we’ve had a very positive response from the horsemen.”
One big concern from the summer meet was the condition of the turf course, which had been redone and expanded to accommodate more horses in anticipation of Del Mar hosting the 2017 Breeders’ Cup.
But after several horses broke down and died early in the meet, officials closed the course for a week and worked on it to make things safer, adding water to soften the grass and aerating it.
Harper said he doesn’t anticipate any major problems running on the turf this fall.
“It was sure frustrating for us,” he said. “The entire meet was strange. It was as if Murphy (Law) was sitting on our shoulder. But it’s a completely different turf course now than it was in the summer. The roots are three times as deep, and we’ve worked hard to maintain it and make sure it’s safe for the horses and the jockeys.”
Del Mar officials are using some of the summer formula for the fall meet in an effort to boost attendance. There will be concerts after the races, giveaways, contests and reduced admission and concession prices.
But it is a meet that officials want to stand on its own.
“We felt it was important for this meet to have its own brand,” said Josh Rubenstein, Del Mar’s vice president and chief operating officer. “We felt the history of Bing Crosby would work well, and just little things like changing the colors from blue and gold in the summer to black and gold for the fall meet will help give it its own identity.
“The racing’s going to be good. Our advance sales are strong, and we think we’ll have the top (simulcast) signal in the country. We think we’ll do well, especially in Las Vegas.”
Contact reporter Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow him on Twitter: @stevecarprj.
