Santa Anita urges CHRB to reject Northern California dates proposal

Santa Anita will slash purses in the near future, and could be the subject of closure, if the California Horse Racing Board approves racing dates for a proposed 10-week meeting at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton later this year, according to a letter a top track executive recently sent to the racing board.

The racing board is scheduled to address the Pleasanton proposal at its monthly meeting in Sacramento on Thursday. The proposed race meeting would begin in mid-October.

Craig Fravel, the executive vice-chairman of Santa Anita’s parent company, 1/ST Racing, urged the board in a three-page letter to reject the Pleasanton proposal, citing the absence of several details regarding the planned race meeting that is designed to replace another 1/ST-owned racetrack, Golden Gate Fields, as the year-round base for Northern California racing.

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Last July, 1/ST Racing announced the closure of Golden Gate Fields in Albany, near Oakland. The track was scheduled to close in December, but will race until June 9 after the racing board urged the company last fall to conduct a winter-spring meeting to allow for the continuity of racing in that portion of the state.

In his letter, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, Fravel said the Pleasanton proposal disrupts plans formed by Southern California tracks to eventually redirect simulcasting revenue from Northern California to southern venues for operating costs and purses.

In the opening of the letter, Fravel described California racing as being “at a crossroads.”

Should racing dates be awarded for the Pleasanton meeting, “an analysis of alternative uses for Santa Anita and San Luis Rey [Downs] will be undertaken in short order,” Fravel wrote.

San Luis Rey Downs is a training center in San Diego county owned by 1/ST Racing.

California tracks operate without the benefit of ancillary revenue from casinos, slot machines, or sports betting that has boosted purses at a majority of tracks throughout the country this century.

“The current model is simply unsustainable and without alternative gaming subsidies the only sensible approach is to focus our collective efforts on generating revenue statewide while investing in our premier properties in Southern California,” Fravel wrote.

Prior to the racing board’s January meeting, officials with Southern California tracks urged the racing board to reject a plan to sustain racing in Northern California and allow only for county fair meetings in that part of the state in the summer and early fall.

Currently, Santa Anita has a purse deficit of more than $4 million, while Del Mar has a deficit of approximately $2 million after handle revenue has failed to keep pace with prize money paid in recent years. Both tracks have cut purses in the last year, as has Los Alamitos, another Southern California track.

Officials from Del Mar and Santa Anita warned the racing board in January that further cuts are likely this year.

Fravel described the Pleasanton proposal “as lacking in so much detail.”

Fravel cited several issues with the Pleasanton proposal, including the lack of details on funding for purses; concern about permits for water usage in the stable area; which has been the subject of multi-million dollar expenditures by Del Mar and Santa Anita in recent years; financial backing for the project; and even issues related to an existing golf course on the Pleasanton infield and how that may affect racing and training.

A group of Northern California-based owners, trainers, and breeders, working with the California Authority of Racing Fairs, developed the Pleasanton proposal as a way to sustain a circuit in Northern California.

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