Record handle for Travers Day

Triple Crown winner American Pharoah continued to juice racing business figures with his unsuccessful attempt to win Saturday’s Travers Stakes at Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., with handle numbers for the day’s races climbing well into record territory.

Total handle on the 13-race card Saturday was $49.7 million, according to the New York Racing Association, the operator of Saratoga, 20 percent higher than the previous Travers Day record, set in 2013. The all-sources handle figure was up 24 percent over that of last year’s 14-race card, and it likely will go down as the highest handle figure for the year outside of the Triple Crown races and the Saturday card of the Breeders’ Cup.

The dramatic rise in handle is testament to the drawing power of American Pharoah, who has become the most popular horse in decades. Including all horizontal wagers ending in the race, handle on the Travers Stakes, which had a field of 10 this year, was $14.5 million, according to the chart, up 40.2 percent over last year’s edition, which also had a field of 10.

American Pharoah was the 1-5 favorite in Saturday’s race, odds that tend to depress handle figures as handicappers avoid short-priced favorites. In contrast, last year, three horses in the Travers were 5-2, another was 7-1, and the rest were double digits. All of the pools in this year’s Travers exceeded the pools for last year’s race, according to the charts.

The overnight television rating for a two-hour broadcast on NBC was a 1.33, according to the network, double the overnight rating for last year’s broadcast and the highest rating for a Travers broadcast since 2004. The overnight rating for the last hour of the broadcast, which featured the Travers, was a 1.66, the network said, roughly comparable to the overnight rating for the network’s coverage of a Breeders’ Cup Classic, though well below the ratings for a typical Triple Crown race.

The 1.66 rating was 15 percent higher than the rating for the network’s coverage of American Pharoah’s previous race, the Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park on Aug. 2.

NYRA capped attendance for the Travers at 50,000 well before American Pharoah had firmly committed to the race. All available tickets for the day were sold, NYRA said. Last year, paid attendance for the race was 46,557, according to NYRA.

Wagering at NYRA’s three properties – Saratoga, Aqueduct in Queens, and Belmont on Long Island – and through NYRA’s account-wagering operation was $11.5 million, up 5.7 percent over last year. NYRA said the figure was a record.

The average field size for the 13 races on Travers Day this year was 9.15 horses, according to the charts. Six of the races were Grade 1 stakes. Handle for the all-Grade 1 pick six ending with the Travers was $879,307, while handle for the pick four ending with the Travers was $2.1 million.