Colonial changes racing schedule for 2023, will run Thursday-Saturday

Colonial Downs in New Kent, Va., will run on a Thursday-through-Saturday live racing schedule next year, the first season under new owner Churchill Downs Inc., the company announced on Wednesday after getting regulatory approval for the 2023 meet.

In returning to a schedule that includes a Friday and Saturday, Colonial will be shelving a plan that saw the track running live for the past several years on a Monday-through-Wednesday schedule to take advantage of a lack of competition for its signal in the simulcast market. The strategy paid dividends this year when total handle skyrocketed 59.9 percent over the 2021 total.

In a release, an official for Churchill Downs Inc., Jack Sours, a vice president of gaming operations, said that the decision was made to return to weekend racing in order to “allow for more Virginians to attend and enjoy live racing.”

In total, the meet will run for 27 live racing days, stretching from July 13 to Sept. 9, with a first post each day of 1:30 p.m. Eastern. The $300,000 Virginia Derby, the track’s richest race, will be run on closing day.

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Colonial Downs runs the vast majority of its races on turf, and it annually posts one of the largest average field-size numbers of U.S. racetracks. That has made it an especially attractive offering in the simulcast market.

But the track also runs up against major U.S. tracks conducting their marquee meets during the summer months, especially Saratoga Race Course in upstate New York and Del Mar in Southern California. Saratoga is dark on Mondays and Tuesdays, and Del Mar has been running on a Thursday-to-Sunday schedule for its summer meet.

Churchill Downs purchased Colonial Downs and its offtrack betting parlors in a transaction it closed earlier this year. The track and the parlors operate historical horse racing machines, which are devices closely resembling slot machines. Churchill has said that it intends to increase the allotment of devices it operates to 5,000.

Virginia law requires one racing date for each 100 machines operated by the owner of Colonial Downs. Churchill has said that it intends to increase the live racing schedule to 50 dates once it completes the build-out of a handful of OTBs still allowed under state law.

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