Churchill fall meet handle declines 1 percent

Total handle for the 21-day Churchill Downs fall meet that concluded on Sunday was down 1 percent compared with handle during the 21-day meet last year, according to amended figures released on Wednesday by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission.

Total handle was $96.6 million this year, compared with $97.6 million last year, according to the figures, which were amended on Wednesday after questions were raised about an initial release from the KHRC on Monday.

Churchill ran the same number of races during the two meets, but had 20 fewer betting interests in 2017, largely due to 20 races being taken off the turf on 10 separate racing days during this year’s meet, compared to none last year. Average field size during the meet was 8.9 horses per race, down only slightly from field size of 9.0 horses last year, according to Churchill.

The initial Monday release from the KHRC stated that handle during the 2017 meet was $107 million. Daily Racing Form cited an initial analysis of the figures performed by a racing consultant, Chris Rossi, based on Equibase charts of Churchill’s races to question the $107 million figure, which was based on data in bet-processing reports from the California Horse Racing Information Management System.

Daily Racing Form performed a separate analysis of the figures and asked a racing official with access to bet-processing reports to conduct another analysis, and both of those analyses turned up the $97 million figure.

Officials of the KHRC, Equibase, and CHRIMS consulted over several days to determine whether the $107 million figure was erroneous, and on Wednesday, a representative of CHRIMS said that the database had double-counted wagering handle from account-wagering operations in its reports, leading to the erroneous figure, according to Steve May, the KHRC director of pari-mutuel wagering and compliance.

The error also appeared to have occurred in 2016, when the KHRC reported handle of $100 million during the Churchill meet, based on the CHRIMS data. The amended figures released on Wednesday stated that handle during the 2016 meet was $97.6 million.

Racetracks owe taxes to the state based on their handle, and over-reporting handle would lead to a higher tax bill. May said that “all applicable pari-mutuel taxes” have been paid by Churchill based on the correct figures.

In a release on Monday that did not state the track’s handle figures, Churchill said that total purses paid out during the 2017 meet were $10.50 million, up 4.5 percent compared with total purses in 2016 of $10.06 million. The average purse during the meet was $47,507.