Hollywood boosts overnight races

Hollywood Park has raised purses for overnight races by 5 percent, retroactive to the start of the current meeting on Nov. 9, the track announced Tuesday. The purse increase includes the final nine days of the meeting, which ends Dec. 19.

The increase was announced despite a meeting that has been plagued by disappointing handle and attendance figures.

Hollywood Park has not offered turf racing at this meeting, because the course failed to take root when it was resodded during the summer. As a result, purse money that would have been spent on a series of lucrative turf stakes was redirected toward overnight races on the main track.

Before the meeting began, the track used some of that money to raise purses for overnight dirt races by 15 percent.