Harness: Racing should be Rockin' Round the Clock

Like it or not, tragedy brings about opportunity. While COVID-19 shuttered the sport of Harness Racing for months and caused over 100,000 deaths in the United States, the Standardbred industry has been left with a chance to unify and remodel to form a more perfect union.

Pre COVID-19, Harness Racing, like every other sport in the world, had problems. We could argue for days which issue should be at the top of the list, but oversaturation and conflicting post time is certainly paramount. The number of racetracks exceeds the demand for the product. The easiest way to prove this fact is to examine handle during the Pandemic.

Scioto Downs averaged about $220,000 in handle per card in 2019. As the only harness track in North America on May 22,23 and 25, the Ohio tracks saw its handle average north of $1.1 million, a 410% increase.

While some argued that coming in at just over $1 million was a soft total given that Scioto was the only Standardbred facility in business, it is an extremely one-sided view considering the obstacles that the track had to overcome to post such an increase. First, over a short period, hundreds of horses had to qualify for racing and the track had to get the word out of its return. Second, as the $220K average handle from 2019 screams loud and clear, people are not familiar with Scioto or the regular trainers, drivers and horses, and because of that, they are less likely to bet. Third, and perhaps most important, the fact that not one horse had a pari-mutuel past performance line since March could have been a huge turn-off for many prospective casual players who don’t have the time to watch 50-100 qualifiers in a few days to prepare properly for wagering.

Getting back to the actual Scioto handle . . . we witnessed throughout the three nights of racing exactly what needs to occur in Harness Racing for tracks to survive – cooperation. Every race during the three nights when Scioto was the only track in the country going off within a 10-minute timeframe (at least five minutes since the last race and five minutes before the next race), it posted handle totals above $100,000. The three times it happened on May 25 - races 5, 9 and 10 - the track handled $158,744, $117,893 and $163,099, respectively. During the rest of the 14-race card, the track only went over $100K once and averaged $68K per race, while going up against Remington Park, Santa Anita and Assiniboia at points during the night.

Some people will point to the TVG-effect as the reason behind a portion of the higher handle, but when Scioto was on TVG every race later in the night, while going off in close proximity to other tracks, handle never broke $100K. Of course being live on TVG probably helped increase handle, but it is not as big a factor as competition.

Another often mentioned reason for increased handle is field size, and there is no doubt that a larger field will perform better in terms of handle than a short field, but at least in the Harness game, and specifically as it related to Scioto on Monday night, there was no relationship between field size and handle. Case in point:

• Races 4 and 5 both had 10 horses and the difference in handle between them was nearly $80K.
• Races 7 and 8 both had 10-horse fields and there was a $40K difference in handle between the two.

Northfield Park had much less competition when it debuted following the COVID-19 shutdown on Tuesday, May 26. Facing only Fonner Park for the first 60 percent of the card and then adding in Assiniboia nationally, the same metrics rang true.

During the 15-race card, Northfield went off within five minutes of another North American track four times and averaged $102K in handle for those races. In the remaining 11 races, the track averaged $143K, with the highest totals coming when the next track was more than 10 minutes from starting a race.

We could argue whether going from an average night of $900K or so in handle to Tuesday’s total of $1,984,499 is considered good when taking into account the lack of competition, but when you come within a couple hundred-thousand of a handle record ($2,267,914) which has stood for nearly two decades, how do you complain?

There are many words and numbers above used to prove one simple point that should be common sense. Less competition means increased handle. The big question is how can the Harness industry maximize profits for all tracks during these post COVID-19 days. The answer is to fill most of the spots on the clock. Using Eastern time, that means tracks starting at 10 AM and going until about 1AM daily.

The arguments against racing at thought-to-be crazy hours or not on the weekends was always that is would come at the cost of on-track attendance. But in these days, with fans not permitted at any tracks for the time being, those arguments are moot.

Think about it, if a harness track started at 10AM and we added one new one every two hours, there would never be more than two-to-three tracks racing at one time and up to seven tracks could race on any given day in synchrony.

Of course, there will be battles as to which track races at 10AM or 10PM, but should there really be a battle. If fans can't attend, isn’t the 10AM spot, when you are only going up against foreign races, a prime one as opposed to undesirable?

The fairest method is to randomly select slots for each track racing during that month. So, if six tracks are racing on Monday, June 1, we put them all in a computerized randomizer and it spits out the order. Safeguards should be put in place so that a track can’t continually get the "worst" slot more than a certain number of times a month. Also, each track should be given the option to choose a handful of dates when it can have the post time it wants. This would allow The Meadowlands to have a prime spot for Hambletonian Day or Meadowlands Pace night, or Pocono to get the time it wants for the Sun Stakes card.

Post times don't need to be on a strict schedule because there will not be a ton of overlap, but tracks will be expected to "stay off" each other (not start races at the same time) and be courteous to fellow tracks.

Tioga and Vernon Downs certainly understood the opportunity and wisely adjusted scheduling for June to move off Friday and Saturday dates for Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Both tracks also altered post times to 4:00 PM to stay off stronger signals racing earlier in the afternoon.

Obviously, both tracks will revert to the original plans once fans are allowed to attend live racing. I understand the lure of having more people on site during the weekend, but maybe handle will be strong enough to support the new schedule where the competition isn't quite as tough? Either way, I applaud the forward thinking in June.

To use a common theme from the COVID-19 pandemic, we are in this together. We should not be 50 or whatever individual tracks, but one industry.