Kentucky Downs announces additional purse increases

Kentucky Downs, the all-turf Kentucky track on the Tennessee border whose casino subsidies have propelled its purses into the top echelon of racetracks worldwide, plans to boost its purses an additional $3.7 million this year, the track announced on Thursday.

The purse increases will be concentrated in the base purses for the track’s stakes races, which award far higher purses to horses eligible for the Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund. While the KTDF subsidies can only be distributed to Kentucky-breds, the base purse can be distributed to any runner.

The $3.1 million Nashville Derby, for example, will have a new base purse of $1.9 million, up from a previously announced value this year of $1.5 million. The $2 million Ladies Marathon will have a new base purse of $1 million, up from $600,000. The Ladies Turf Sprint will have a base purse of $900,000, up from $600,000.

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In total, nine of the 18 stakes races at the track were targeted for new increases, in some cases on top of separate increases announced in April. Fifteen of those 18 stakes races will have purses over $1 million, when the KTDF supplements are included.

Kentucky Downs will run seven days this year, from Aug. 29 to Sept. 11. Its total purse distribution this year, including the KTDF supplements, will be more than $37 million, or a total of $5.3 million per day.

Purses for maiden races are slated to increase from $150,000 to $170,000 this year, when including the supplements, the highest in the world for that class of race (the base level is $90,000). First-level allowance races will have a purse of $220,000, also including the supplements (base level is $115,000).

By statute, the KTDF supplements are generated by casinos operated by Kentucky Downs on the racetrack property and elsewhere. The growth of casinos in Kentucky, which are limited by law to racetrack operators, and the statutory requirement for subsidies to be directed to purses, have led to a doubling of purses on the Kentucky circuit in the last decade, and more growth is likely in the years to come.

With a short meet – there are 75 races in the track’s condition book this year – Kentucky Downs has reached agreements in the past to spread some of its KTDF supplement money to other Kentucky tracks. Those agreements have been subject to the approval of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, which is now known as the Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corporation (the vast sums of money raised by casinos in Kentucky, plus the addition of sports betting in the past year, led the legislature to convert the commission from an adjunct of a cabinet agency to a state corporation this year).

Over the past several years, some owners and racing organizations have lobbied Kentucky Downs to concentrate more of its purse increases to the base purses of its races, in order to attract more horses from out-of-state locales that are ineligible for the KTDF supplements. KTDF allocations are available to as many as 12 horses in each race, depending on the field size. Unearned allocations revert back to the fund.

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