May 15, 2025 • 25 mins
On this week's Harness Racing Alumni Show, we are joined by racetrack mutual expert, Michael Antoniades. Michael discusses with Freddie, Trade, and Bob the decline in harness racing's YTD handle and offers his opinion on the cause of the falling handles and suggests a few solutions on reversing the decline. All on this week's broadcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to this week's Harness Racing Alumni Show. I'm Freddie
Hudson and I'm here today with Trade Martin and Bob
Marks the Harness Racing Alumni Show with your host Freddie
Hudson and Trade Martin joining us as this week's special
guest is Michael Antonatis, the Mutual Expert. Michael, Welcome back
(00:22):
to the Harness Racing Alumni Show.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Good morning everyone. I hope you're doing well.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Okay, Michael, let's talk about the decline in handle. What
can you tell us about that?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Well, everything goes in friends, right, business goes up, business
goes down.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
So I thought the best.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Way to do this for this show would be to
try and explain where I get my ideas and thirty
years of experience. So we talked about the boardwalk and
thirty years ago ninety five where we found out that
high end betters a nine percent rebate will drastically increase
their handle. And from that spawned OURGS and Elite and
(01:09):
some other groups. And we'd learned thirty years ago that
if you lowered takeout you get a big response.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
That was nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
So nineteen ninety five SAMA casting began and what we
learned was going against the metal Lands if you were
Sportsman's Park or any other track. We quickly found out
that running a Sportsman's Park race near the metal Lands
handle would get crushed. I'm sure a lot of other
tracks figured that out, so we put that we learned that.
Then we fast forward to nineteen ninety eight, and what
(01:42):
we learned was there was a night where there were
eleven thousand people at the track and we locked them out.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Fifteen deep the first race.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
So to alleviate the problem, we took an extra two
to three minutes at the gate, and we found out
that this had an incredible effect on increasing handle.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Again, this is nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
So one night in ninety eight, the perfect storm, we
had a field of eight four thousand dollars claimers finally
spaced them off the metal Lands. California took the race
and lo and behold, that race did two hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Two years later, bum morel.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Ascended into being the number two track in the country
and on their big night they did almost three million.
So now we fast forward to twenty eleven where Chris
Shick comes up with strategic wagering. So what did mister
Schick teach us lowering takeout, free program pages and guaranteed
polls was a way to get people interested and horse racing.
(02:39):
The next year, the metal Lands returns no drag race
every twenty minutes.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Handle plummets.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
In twenty twelve, their bumb morel goes to a seven
minute drag and in that same year increased handle twenty
six million. And what's significant is that their sister track, Maywood,
who refuses to lower takeout and dragged the gate, watches
handle decrease. Three years later, I get hired by the
Metal Lands to schedule post times by Jason.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Settlemore and Sam McKee.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
We increased the drag, We coordinate post times with other
tracks and it works. Twenty sixteen winter Meet we averaged
three million dollars.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
It's pre subsidy, and that's on nights when the.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Total purses didn't do Sometimes we're under one hundred thousand,
so Handle was thirty times more in the purses on
some nights. The next year, Sam dies and it's easy replaceable.
Spark is gone forever, and it's It was a difficult
year for everybody. But then the next year we got
sports betting and a subsidy in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
We regroup, the.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Team run by Jason, formulates a new plan five years
subsidy raises purses.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
In the next five years.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Handled the Metal Lands grew by three hundred million dollars.
Then we have COVID two years later, and COVID changes
everything more. Betters now play on their phones, live handle decreases.
But the next three years were great ones because we
had better communication with our partners and our major players,
(04:15):
and that pays off. In twenty twenty three, the Metal
Ends averaged three million dollars for the entire year. The
next year they would do the same. I went to
Oak Grove, a small track in Kentucky, and handel Is
nearly tripled in three years, trying to incorporate some of
the things same things we did at the Metal Lands
and some other places. In twenty twenty four we went
(04:39):
to the Jug and although the purse dropped three hundred
and fifty thousand and there were three less races, handle
increased on those two days seven hundred thousand dollars, and
the Jug had their best day in decades.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
And then I go with John Campbell.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I think I learned an incredible amount from him, and
hopefully he learned the gambling.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Side of the business from me.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Together with the Hambletonian Society, we move the needle on
our marquee events substantially. The Hambletonian handled over seven million
in the last three years. The Hambletonian Race, which is
under five hundred thousand some years now is over a million.
Bellow are up seven hundred thousand on those two days.
So what have we learned from a gambling perspective? Hey,
(05:23):
post times will make or break you. If you get
the wrong post times, you can't succeed. Post Time coordination
is one of the single most important things you can
do to increase handle and revenue. You can't run the
race on top of major tracks. If you do, it's
at your own risk. And I think on this show
and Larry Rollo show, we've both said the takeout is
(05:46):
too high. That if you applied the blended twenty percent
rate takeout to casino games and sports, there wouldn't be
a sportsbook or casino in the country.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
So that brings us to the metal land. And let
me just say.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
This, this is difficult for me, but there was a
moment when President Bush was eulogized by Senator Alan Simpson.
The two things I loved the most out of that
eulogy were the subjects.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Of loyalty and laughter.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
And on the subject of loyalty, I still have loyalty
to the Metal Ends. I was like go around Christmas.
For the decade we did a lot of amazing things together,
which included bringing the Metal Ends and Harness Racing back
from the dead. So watching this twenty twenty five season
has been difficult. But these bad decisions about the drag
(06:43):
shouldn't deflect anything about what mister Garral.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Has done.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Since he opened the Metal Lands in twenty eleven. They
were about to go out of business when the FBI
tried to clean up the game. He put millions of
his own dollars to help. He's got some major skin
in the game, and because of that he gets a
mulligan from me on this recent escapade. Simply speaking, he
(07:13):
made a mistake and they paid a huge price, and
so did the sport.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Let's move on. And the laughter part.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
That mister Simpsons Centator Simpson talked about, I say, with
a group of very knowledgeable people about racing, but they
can keep you laughing for hours. They can turn to
me and go, you keep a driver that's two for
his last sixty. Michael, you might be you might just
be the biggest imbecile in the country. So let's learn
(07:44):
from comedy and laughing and lighten up. Everybody makes mistakes
except the people that don't try to do anything or
the people who don't try anything. So maybe from a
comedy perspective, mister Garrald and Jason will reflect on this,
maybe say, maybe you should have listened to a goofy
great kid from Chicago.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
So let's.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Open up the floor and I'll try and answer any
questions you have in a positive note.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Okay, not Michael, getting back to talking about the handles.
Most of the way you're Understone now online and the
restretch only receive about three percent of that. So isn't
that they're not making a lot of money off the handles.
You need like ten million dollar handles to be in
(08:34):
the black.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Okay, let's let's keep it less personal. Let's not make
it about the metal end. But this has been a
growing trend for twenty years. So if you have five
percent of your handle is on track for your product
and you get twenty percent of that then you have
(09:02):
ninety off track and you're getting five percent of that.
Are the people that have caught called samocast wagering the
cheap dollars correct? They're nowhere near correct. Balls of the
revenue is driven by dollars off track, and when we
start realizing this, I think we'll run a more efficient business.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Now Kentucky seems to have the right formula, are going
with the historic wagering machines. The other tracks are tied
up with the casinos and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
But if the.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Gaming money's not put there, I don't think that they
can survive. Well, that needs to be addressed to somehow
to how to save the tracks and how to basically
be self sufficient and not totally relying on the money
coming in from the gaming industry.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Well, I think we've talked about this on your show,
that there will be a downsizing here, that we will
lose some tracks. It's fairly inevitable unless something unforeseen happens.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
And to be perfectly honest, I mean.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Maybe that's a good thing that there's not enough business
to drive all these tracks. I'm talking about gambling.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Business, So.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
This doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. If
you all recall two thousand and eight, every Atlantic city
casino was going to go under, but they didn't because
they downsized. Now they're doing fairly well. So did that
happen to us?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
It certainly, it certainly could.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Now, Bob, you've been monitoring the handles not lately, haven't you.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Oh, I've been looking at him. What I can say?
Could you repeat that? I didn't hear you.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
I said, the handles that I've seen at most of
these Scratch like Scioto, Oak Grove or whatever, they're pretty anemic.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Okay, So how how do we get more people to
be that? What type of immis should've be coming up
with and what what can we get to get people
to start betting to increase the handles.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Let's let's learn lesson number one that we had twenty
five years ago. We found out that by taking a
little time at the gate, handle increased. Didn't know why,
(11:48):
but if you paid.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Attention, you realize handle increased. When mister Rawl opened.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
The Meadowlands in twenty twelve, he went with zero drag.
In other words, he went right zero and he went
with a race every twenty minutes.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
And what he found out his first year of the.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
New Meadowlands is that business plan got annihilated. It didn't work,
and slowly over the course of years. Four years later,
as we said, we were incorporating a seven minute drag
in twenty sixteen with Jason, and in the winter of
twenty sixteen the winter meet averaged three million dollars. And
(12:32):
that was on some days where purses weren't one hundred
thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I mean, as I said.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Before, when I was going through this, there were days
when handle was thirty times the purses.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
That's the model, all right. Now, that was.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Twenty sixteen, and obviously we know that stake raises can't
support themselves off handle because you know, just they can't.
So I think what we have to do and then
won't do it? They'll never do it. But if you
ever started, if this were a newly started business, as
(13:09):
a startup, this.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Is how you do it.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
You take your breeding people like mister Marx and you go,
all right, so what do the stakes races have to
go for at the crack?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
See? Okay?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Figure that out? And then now what do the young
horses have to go for it? Then hours are one
and hours of two? Figure that out and then bring
your overnight people and say what do the overnight purses
have to be to get people to come race at
our racetrack. Now we've got that figure. So now you
(13:48):
simply say, we've got our purses for the overnight. So
we've got our purses for the steaks, we've got our
purses for the young horses. How many days can we
race and have the persons we need? And nobody does that.
When we start doing that and realize that that number
(14:08):
in the right corner has to be significantly higher, and
to do that you have to race less, we might
come around.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Okay, because if you look at the tracks right now,
and if you go strictly by the handles coming in,
none of the tracks can support the purchase that they're
putting out. The handles cannot support the over people of
the tracks and the purchase. The money's just not they're
coming in batan wise. Well that's the way I see it.
(14:41):
When I look at all these handles, and I let's
look at youngers. They have the biggest purses in the country,
and you know they don't do a million dollars a night.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I think we're.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
I think they learned the lesson the other day that
that perhaps those races should have stayed on Monday where
they get more support because you don't have to fight
the Metal Lands, you don't have to fight Charlestown, you
don't have to to know, you've got a lot of
tracks out there. On a Friday night, it's a very
(15:14):
difficult battle for a track like Yonkers, you know, with
eight horses of race, so that's a killer to start with.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
So to go on a Monday.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Night where instead of going against Thoroughbreds and the metal Lands,
you're going up against Western Fair and you know, smaller
tracks like that Harrington, of.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Course you're going to compete better. So was it worth
a try? Yeah? It was? But I think though those
races belong on Monday night. I think.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Horsee Indianapolis is a great example of a track that
realized that, listen, we can't fight with Santhonida and Gulf Stream.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And Woodbine and Nira and it just can't do it.
So let's move our races to Monday through Thursday.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
And they've had incredible success because they understand the market.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Well, that makes a lot of sense to me, you know,
there's no doubt about that. But why aren't these guys
waking up and realizing that Mike, they need somebody like
you to tell them, I guess, or their management doesn't
really see what's really going on.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
You have to understand there's all kinds of things going on.
First of all, the workers at the track want as
many days as they can get.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And sometimes, you know, some of the officials.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Want as many days as they can get. And this
goes back to horse people. I always advocated that the
purse should be based on field size, and the reason
for that is your race goes for twenty thousand or ten,
and your race goes for twenty thousand with five.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Well, who wants to race with ten?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
But if you adjusted that purse according to field size,
now everybody management, the horsemen get on the same page,
realizing that there's a certain plus going with.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
A bigger field. Until we start working together, this really
can't work unless you get down size of tracks.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
It should work better because I think at its top,
the sport is absolutely magnificent. And this is not just
bs by somebody that's.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
In the business.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
I mean, any gambler could tell that at its best
this sport really is compelling.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
But so few of the races are compelling and you've
hit people. Try. I mean, mister Gorelse tried.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Right, I mean, he tried to bring back what Jojo
Frank did at the Meadowlands, and he kind of knows
that if you get that.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Style of race in the handle's going to go up.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
But with the exception of like the amateurs in two
thousand and twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two where you
saw that Nola holes and a lot of guys going
to the front and everything, just don't see it. And
I think the tracks don't understand that the faster you
(18:21):
make the track, the worse you're racing is. Of course,
you have to get around the turns. And if the
speed just gets away from everybody, the gambling is going
to be limited on your product. And who does that help?
No one but the way to generate money. To come
back to your question, Freddy, you need more downtime, and
you need less races, and you need better use of
(18:43):
your silocasting. Obviously, in a day when you're not racing
and you're bringing in fifteen or twenty tracks, those are
the days when you make money. Just have to have
enough of those days to go along with your racing.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Days. I think we raise way too much.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
I think a lot of horsemen would disagree with you
on that one. There they're making their livings off of
the first.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Money coming in.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
But no, probably the correct answer is less tracks will
probably serve to save the sport. In the bigger picture,
it's certainly possible. We have a tremendous horse shortage right now.
You know, we're home producing about seven thousand registered polls
a year, maybe eight thousand, but that's not enough to
(19:34):
sustain of the business. And our older horses are not
making it like a lot of horses are retiring before
their four year old careers, and so we're losing the
age horse population. So those are a couple of issues
that the forgive.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Because some famous, some famous gambler to say, what do
we have a horse shortage or a track surplus? And
you can make the argument on either side, right, But.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
I can I can always go back when we used
to have about sixty back too. So we have put
down drastically on a number of tracks, all right, But.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
We have to adapt to market conditions, Freddy, I mean
we have to adapt to that. Where we did have
sixty tracks, there was no casino gambling there was legalized
no legalized supports betting. So these these are the conditions
we have now. So do we just cry about it?
Or do we go all right, let's what how do
we fix this? How do we make it?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
I to go and say, it would be great if
every track.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Had full fields, because all of a sudden, now you
get to handle surplus every one of those tracks.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
But it's difficult to make that happen. That's the goal, right,
So Trade did you want to jump back in here?
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Well, I like what Mike is talking about. But Michael,
what are you doing at the track that you're working
at right now? What what is your plan? What is
your what is your strategy?
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Well, Kentucky is in a very good position here. They've got,
first of all, the horse culture in Kentucky is tremendous.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
You've got one of the biggest companies in racing, Churchill Downs,
based in Louisville.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
And the fact is casino companies don't own the tracks
in Kentucky.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Race tracks do.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
So those race tracks are interested in being race tracks
and they have no interest.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
In getting rid of the racing.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
So there's the paradox, right, Kentucky's interested in making racing
as good as it can. Meanwhile, in other parts of
the country you have casino companies that are doing particularly
well that perhaps want to get rid of racing aute.
So it's a totally different thing. It's like here, you
(21:52):
go to oak Old and you go through the paddock
and everybody's cheerful. The purposes are great, right, I'm sure
it's the same at the Red Mile. You know, it's
a great venue. You know, you go through the paddock
at some of these places and the people have, you know, despair.
I mean a lot of people aren't doing as well
because the purses aren't high. And I come back to
the breeding industry, which Bob should love, but I don't
(22:13):
know how do you do it. It's like last year
oak Grove had in June or July had maiden races
going for twenty five thousand. Now, this sounds insane until
you start looking at the Thoroughbreds. The main race in
Church are going for one hundred and twenty two thousand. Now,
nobody's saying we should go for one hundred and twenty
(22:34):
two thousand, and Kentucky Downs they'll be going.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
For one hundred and seventy thousand.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Why because they want to support the yearling industry. They
want to support the breeding industry. So for us to
be on a similar plane five years from now, we
have to get these younger horses to race for more.
And the way you do that is you raceless. But
if you can get some of these good price yearling
(23:00):
buyers to start making fifty sixty seventy thousand without a
Steake's horse, they're going right back to the sales. Now,
you can show up the middle part of the sales
and a lot of this gets solved.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
But these these maiden.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Prices and the nowinders, the two they have to go
for significantly more.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
If you get people into the yearling game.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
And as we've talked, there is an enormous amount of
money right now. And if you had the right product,
I think you could get people into the horse racing
industry right now.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah, and Kentucky has a real good reading incentive over there,
because Michelle was talking about last week on our show
where she said that she had a horse that won
in Kentucky that was New York bread where she got
I think thirty five or forty thousand. Had the horse
been Kentucky bread, she would have gotten a ninety thousand
dollars for the perch winning. A major incentive is a
(23:54):
major incentive.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
That is, you have to drive the business with the
breeding industry, but the breeding industry in the end has
to be the racing industry. The racing part of it
has to be just as important. But I think if
we fixed that, I mean, this would do a lot
of good in getting people back into the business.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
We talked about it, Freddie. We had a couple of
guys that dropped out.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Of the business and they got back in after decades.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
You know, on the sidelines.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Why Kentucky, Because Kentucky is talking all the positive stuff,
all the breeding, and it's exciting and everybody is really
in a positive, positive way trying to improve everything.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
You know. Hopefully mister Grell gets his casino because that
place should be the flagship track, and everybody wants that
place to be the flagship track. But to do that,
the purses has to be higher. How do you do that? Obviously,
a casino is one way.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. You're welcome, sir.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Okay, that's a wrap for this week's show.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Thanks for listening, and please don't forget to join us again.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Next week the Huns Racing Alumni Show
Welcome to this week's Harness Racing Alumni Show. I'm Freddie
Hudson and I'm here today with Trade Martin and Bob
Marks the Harness Racing Alumni Show with your host Freddie
Hudson and Trade Martin joining us as this week's special
guest is Michael Antonatis, the Mutual Expert. Michael, Welcome back
(00:22):
to the Harness Racing Alumni Show.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Good morning everyone. I hope you're doing well.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Okay, Michael, let's talk about the decline in handle. What
can you tell us about that?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Well, everything goes in friends, right, business goes up, business
goes down.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
So I thought the best.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Way to do this for this show would be to
try and explain where I get my ideas and thirty
years of experience. So we talked about the boardwalk and
thirty years ago ninety five where we found out that
high end betters a nine percent rebate will drastically increase
their handle. And from that spawned OURGS and Elite and
(01:09):
some other groups. And we'd learned thirty years ago that
if you lowered takeout you get a big response.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
That was nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
So nineteen ninety five SAMA casting began and what we
learned was going against the metal Lands if you were
Sportsman's Park or any other track. We quickly found out
that running a Sportsman's Park race near the metal Lands
handle would get crushed. I'm sure a lot of other
tracks figured that out, so we put that we learned that.
Then we fast forward to nineteen ninety eight, and what
(01:42):
we learned was there was a night where there were
eleven thousand people at the track and we locked them out.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Fifteen deep the first race.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
So to alleviate the problem, we took an extra two
to three minutes at the gate, and we found out
that this had an incredible effect on increasing handle.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Again, this is nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
So one night in ninety eight, the perfect storm, we
had a field of eight four thousand dollars claimers finally
spaced them off the metal Lands. California took the race
and lo and behold, that race did two hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Two years later, bum morel.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Ascended into being the number two track in the country
and on their big night they did almost three million.
So now we fast forward to twenty eleven where Chris
Shick comes up with strategic wagering. So what did mister
Schick teach us lowering takeout, free program pages and guaranteed
polls was a way to get people interested and horse racing.
(02:39):
The next year, the metal Lands returns no drag race
every twenty minutes.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Handle plummets.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
In twenty twelve, their bumb morel goes to a seven
minute drag and in that same year increased handle twenty
six million. And what's significant is that their sister track, Maywood,
who refuses to lower takeout and dragged the gate, watches
handle decrease. Three years later, I get hired by the
Metal Lands to schedule post times by Jason.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Settlemore and Sam McKee.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
We increased the drag, We coordinate post times with other
tracks and it works. Twenty sixteen winter Meet we averaged
three million dollars.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
It's pre subsidy, and that's on nights when the.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Total purses didn't do Sometimes we're under one hundred thousand,
so Handle was thirty times more in the purses on
some nights. The next year, Sam dies and it's easy replaceable.
Spark is gone forever, and it's It was a difficult
year for everybody. But then the next year we got
sports betting and a subsidy in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
We regroup, the.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Team run by Jason, formulates a new plan five years
subsidy raises purses.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
In the next five years.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Handled the Metal Lands grew by three hundred million dollars.
Then we have COVID two years later, and COVID changes
everything more. Betters now play on their phones, live handle decreases.
But the next three years were great ones because we
had better communication with our partners and our major players,
(04:15):
and that pays off. In twenty twenty three, the Metal
Ends averaged three million dollars for the entire year. The
next year they would do the same. I went to
Oak Grove, a small track in Kentucky, and handel Is
nearly tripled in three years, trying to incorporate some of
the things same things we did at the Metal Lands
and some other places. In twenty twenty four we went
(04:39):
to the Jug and although the purse dropped three hundred
and fifty thousand and there were three less races, handle
increased on those two days seven hundred thousand dollars, and
the Jug had their best day in decades.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
And then I go with John Campbell.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I think I learned an incredible amount from him, and
hopefully he learned the gambling.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Side of the business from me.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Together with the Hambletonian Society, we move the needle on
our marquee events substantially. The Hambletonian handled over seven million
in the last three years. The Hambletonian Race, which is
under five hundred thousand some years now is over a million.
Bellow are up seven hundred thousand on those two days.
So what have we learned from a gambling perspective? Hey,
(05:23):
post times will make or break you. If you get
the wrong post times, you can't succeed. Post Time coordination
is one of the single most important things you can
do to increase handle and revenue. You can't run the
race on top of major tracks. If you do, it's
at your own risk. And I think on this show
and Larry Rollo show, we've both said the takeout is
(05:46):
too high. That if you applied the blended twenty percent
rate takeout to casino games and sports, there wouldn't be
a sportsbook or casino in the country.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
So that brings us to the metal land. And let
me just say.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
This, this is difficult for me, but there was a
moment when President Bush was eulogized by Senator Alan Simpson.
The two things I loved the most out of that
eulogy were the subjects.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Of loyalty and laughter.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
And on the subject of loyalty, I still have loyalty
to the Metal Ends. I was like go around Christmas.
For the decade we did a lot of amazing things together,
which included bringing the Metal Ends and Harness Racing back
from the dead. So watching this twenty twenty five season
has been difficult. But these bad decisions about the drag
(06:43):
shouldn't deflect anything about what mister Garral.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Has done.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Since he opened the Metal Lands in twenty eleven. They
were about to go out of business when the FBI
tried to clean up the game. He put millions of
his own dollars to help. He's got some major skin
in the game, and because of that he gets a
mulligan from me on this recent escapade. Simply speaking, he
(07:13):
made a mistake and they paid a huge price, and
so did the sport.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Let's move on. And the laughter part.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
That mister Simpsons Centator Simpson talked about, I say, with
a group of very knowledgeable people about racing, but they
can keep you laughing for hours. They can turn to
me and go, you keep a driver that's two for
his last sixty. Michael, you might be you might just
be the biggest imbecile in the country. So let's learn
(07:44):
from comedy and laughing and lighten up. Everybody makes mistakes
except the people that don't try to do anything or
the people who don't try anything. So maybe from a
comedy perspective, mister Garrald and Jason will reflect on this,
maybe say, maybe you should have listened to a goofy
great kid from Chicago.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
So let's.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Open up the floor and I'll try and answer any
questions you have in a positive note.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Okay, not Michael, getting back to talking about the handles.
Most of the way you're Understone now online and the
restretch only receive about three percent of that. So isn't
that they're not making a lot of money off the handles.
You need like ten million dollar handles to be in
(08:34):
the black.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Okay, let's let's keep it less personal. Let's not make
it about the metal end. But this has been a
growing trend for twenty years. So if you have five
percent of your handle is on track for your product
and you get twenty percent of that then you have
(09:02):
ninety off track and you're getting five percent of that.
Are the people that have caught called samocast wagering the
cheap dollars correct? They're nowhere near correct. Balls of the
revenue is driven by dollars off track, and when we
start realizing this, I think we'll run a more efficient business.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Now Kentucky seems to have the right formula, are going
with the historic wagering machines. The other tracks are tied
up with the casinos and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
But if the.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Gaming money's not put there, I don't think that they
can survive. Well, that needs to be addressed to somehow
to how to save the tracks and how to basically
be self sufficient and not totally relying on the money
coming in from the gaming industry.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Well, I think we've talked about this on your show,
that there will be a downsizing here, that we will
lose some tracks. It's fairly inevitable unless something unforeseen happens.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
And to be perfectly honest, I mean.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Maybe that's a good thing that there's not enough business
to drive all these tracks. I'm talking about gambling.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Business, So.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
This doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. If
you all recall two thousand and eight, every Atlantic city
casino was going to go under, but they didn't because
they downsized. Now they're doing fairly well. So did that
happen to us?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
It certainly, it certainly could.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Now, Bob, you've been monitoring the handles not lately, haven't you.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Oh, I've been looking at him. What I can say?
Could you repeat that? I didn't hear you.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
I said, the handles that I've seen at most of
these Scratch like Scioto, Oak Grove or whatever, they're pretty anemic.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Okay, So how how do we get more people to
be that? What type of immis should've be coming up
with and what what can we get to get people
to start betting to increase the handles.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Let's let's learn lesson number one that we had twenty
five years ago. We found out that by taking a
little time at the gate, handle increased. Didn't know why,
(11:48):
but if you paid.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Attention, you realize handle increased. When mister Rawl opened.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
The Meadowlands in twenty twelve, he went with zero drag.
In other words, he went right zero and he went
with a race every twenty minutes.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
And what he found out his first year of the.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
New Meadowlands is that business plan got annihilated. It didn't work,
and slowly over the course of years. Four years later,
as we said, we were incorporating a seven minute drag
in twenty sixteen with Jason, and in the winter of
twenty sixteen the winter meet averaged three million dollars. And
(12:32):
that was on some days where purses weren't one hundred
thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I mean, as I said.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Before, when I was going through this, there were days
when handle was thirty times the purses.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
That's the model, all right. Now, that was.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Twenty sixteen, and obviously we know that stake raises can't
support themselves off handle because you know, just they can't.
So I think what we have to do and then
won't do it? They'll never do it. But if you
ever started, if this were a newly started business, as
(13:09):
a startup, this.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Is how you do it.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
You take your breeding people like mister Marx and you go,
all right, so what do the stakes races have to
go for at the crack?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
See? Okay?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Figure that out? And then now what do the young
horses have to go for it? Then hours are one
and hours of two? Figure that out and then bring
your overnight people and say what do the overnight purses
have to be to get people to come race at
our racetrack. Now we've got that figure. So now you
(13:48):
simply say, we've got our purses for the overnight. So
we've got our purses for the steaks, we've got our
purses for the young horses. How many days can we
race and have the persons we need? And nobody does that.
When we start doing that and realize that that number
(14:08):
in the right corner has to be significantly higher, and
to do that you have to race less, we might
come around.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Okay, because if you look at the tracks right now,
and if you go strictly by the handles coming in,
none of the tracks can support the purchase that they're
putting out. The handles cannot support the over people of
the tracks and the purchase. The money's just not they're
coming in batan wise. Well that's the way I see it.
(14:41):
When I look at all these handles, and I let's
look at youngers. They have the biggest purses in the country,
and you know they don't do a million dollars a night.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I think we're.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
I think they learned the lesson the other day that
that perhaps those races should have stayed on Monday where
they get more support because you don't have to fight
the Metal Lands, you don't have to fight Charlestown, you
don't have to to know, you've got a lot of
tracks out there. On a Friday night, it's a very
(15:14):
difficult battle for a track like Yonkers, you know, with
eight horses of race, so that's a killer to start with.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
So to go on a Monday.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Night where instead of going against Thoroughbreds and the metal Lands,
you're going up against Western Fair and you know, smaller
tracks like that Harrington, of.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Course you're going to compete better. So was it worth
a try? Yeah? It was? But I think though those
races belong on Monday night. I think.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Horsee Indianapolis is a great example of a track that
realized that, listen, we can't fight with Santhonida and Gulf Stream.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And Woodbine and Nira and it just can't do it.
So let's move our races to Monday through Thursday.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
And they've had incredible success because they understand the market.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Well, that makes a lot of sense to me, you know,
there's no doubt about that. But why aren't these guys
waking up and realizing that Mike, they need somebody like
you to tell them, I guess, or their management doesn't
really see what's really going on.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
You have to understand there's all kinds of things going on.
First of all, the workers at the track want as
many days as they can get.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And sometimes, you know, some of the officials.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Want as many days as they can get. And this
goes back to horse people. I always advocated that the
purse should be based on field size, and the reason
for that is your race goes for twenty thousand or ten,
and your race goes for twenty thousand with five.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Well, who wants to race with ten?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
But if you adjusted that purse according to field size,
now everybody management, the horsemen get on the same page,
realizing that there's a certain plus going with.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
A bigger field. Until we start working together, this really
can't work unless you get down size of tracks.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
It should work better because I think at its top,
the sport is absolutely magnificent. And this is not just
bs by somebody that's.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
In the business.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
I mean, any gambler could tell that at its best
this sport really is compelling.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
But so few of the races are compelling and you've
hit people. Try. I mean, mister Gorelse tried.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Right, I mean, he tried to bring back what Jojo
Frank did at the Meadowlands, and he kind of knows
that if you get that.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Style of race in the handle's going to go up.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
But with the exception of like the amateurs in two
thousand and twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two where you
saw that Nola holes and a lot of guys going
to the front and everything, just don't see it. And
I think the tracks don't understand that the faster you
(18:21):
make the track, the worse you're racing is. Of course,
you have to get around the turns. And if the
speed just gets away from everybody, the gambling is going
to be limited on your product. And who does that help?
No one but the way to generate money. To come
back to your question, Freddy, you need more downtime, and
you need less races, and you need better use of
(18:43):
your silocasting. Obviously, in a day when you're not racing
and you're bringing in fifteen or twenty tracks, those are
the days when you make money. Just have to have
enough of those days to go along with your racing.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Days. I think we raise way too much.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
I think a lot of horsemen would disagree with you
on that one. There they're making their livings off of
the first.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Money coming in.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
But no, probably the correct answer is less tracks will
probably serve to save the sport. In the bigger picture,
it's certainly possible. We have a tremendous horse shortage right now.
You know, we're home producing about seven thousand registered polls
a year, maybe eight thousand, but that's not enough to
(19:34):
sustain of the business. And our older horses are not
making it like a lot of horses are retiring before
their four year old careers, and so we're losing the
age horse population. So those are a couple of issues
that the forgive.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Because some famous, some famous gambler to say, what do
we have a horse shortage or a track surplus? And
you can make the argument on either side, right, But.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
I can I can always go back when we used
to have about sixty back too. So we have put
down drastically on a number of tracks, all right, But.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
We have to adapt to market conditions, Freddy, I mean
we have to adapt to that. Where we did have
sixty tracks, there was no casino gambling there was legalized
no legalized supports betting. So these these are the conditions
we have now. So do we just cry about it?
Or do we go all right, let's what how do
we fix this? How do we make it?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
I to go and say, it would be great if
every track.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Had full fields, because all of a sudden, now you
get to handle surplus every one of those tracks.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
But it's difficult to make that happen. That's the goal, right,
So Trade did you want to jump back in here?
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Well, I like what Mike is talking about. But Michael,
what are you doing at the track that you're working
at right now? What what is your plan? What is
your what is your strategy?
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Well, Kentucky is in a very good position here. They've got,
first of all, the horse culture in Kentucky is tremendous.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
You've got one of the biggest companies in racing, Churchill Downs,
based in Louisville.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
And the fact is casino companies don't own the tracks
in Kentucky.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Race tracks do.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
So those race tracks are interested in being race tracks
and they have no interest.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
In getting rid of the racing.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
So there's the paradox, right, Kentucky's interested in making racing
as good as it can. Meanwhile, in other parts of
the country you have casino companies that are doing particularly
well that perhaps want to get rid of racing aute.
So it's a totally different thing. It's like here, you
(21:52):
go to oak Old and you go through the paddock
and everybody's cheerful. The purposes are great, right, I'm sure
it's the same at the Red Mile. You know, it's
a great venue. You know, you go through the paddock
at some of these places and the people have, you know, despair.
I mean a lot of people aren't doing as well
because the purses aren't high. And I come back to
the breeding industry, which Bob should love, but I don't
(22:13):
know how do you do it. It's like last year
oak Grove had in June or July had maiden races
going for twenty five thousand. Now, this sounds insane until
you start looking at the Thoroughbreds. The main race in
Church are going for one hundred and twenty two thousand. Now,
nobody's saying we should go for one hundred and twenty
(22:34):
two thousand, and Kentucky Downs they'll be going.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
For one hundred and seventy thousand.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Why because they want to support the yearling industry. They
want to support the breeding industry. So for us to
be on a similar plane five years from now, we
have to get these younger horses to race for more.
And the way you do that is you raceless. But
if you can get some of these good price yearling
(23:00):
buyers to start making fifty sixty seventy thousand without a
Steake's horse, they're going right back to the sales. Now,
you can show up the middle part of the sales
and a lot of this gets solved.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
But these these maiden.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Prices and the nowinders, the two they have to go
for significantly more.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
If you get people into the yearling game.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
And as we've talked, there is an enormous amount of
money right now. And if you had the right product,
I think you could get people into the horse racing
industry right now.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah, and Kentucky has a real good reading incentive over there,
because Michelle was talking about last week on our show
where she said that she had a horse that won
in Kentucky that was New York bread where she got
I think thirty five or forty thousand. Had the horse
been Kentucky bread, she would have gotten a ninety thousand
dollars for the perch winning. A major incentive is a
(23:54):
major incentive.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
That is, you have to drive the business with the
breeding industry, but the breeding industry in the end has
to be the racing industry. The racing part of it
has to be just as important. But I think if
we fixed that, I mean, this would do a lot
of good in getting people back into the business.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
We talked about it, Freddie. We had a couple of
guys that dropped out.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Of the business and they got back in after decades.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
You know, on the sidelines.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Why Kentucky, Because Kentucky is talking all the positive stuff,
all the breeding, and it's exciting and everybody is really
in a positive, positive way trying to improve everything.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
You know. Hopefully mister Grell gets his casino because that
place should be the flagship track, and everybody wants that
place to be the flagship track. But to do that,
the purses has to be higher. How do you do that? Obviously,
a casino is one way.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. You're welcome, sir.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Okay, that's a wrap for this week's show.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Thanks for listening, and please don't forget to join us again.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Next week the Huns Racing Alumni Show
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