Coming from behind
Plagued by declining attendance, Southern California thoroughbred tracks race to save the Sport of Kings
By Jennifer MacDonald 07/29/2010
In true show business style, she won the race in the final few hundred yards to break the record for most consecutive wins in modern-day horse racing.
Zenyatta, the charismatic dark brown mare with a white South America-shaped marking down her long muzzle, has won 17 back-to-back races, and along the way the hearts of racing fans.
With a personality to match her speed, Zenyatta is one of the most popular horses in thoroughbred racing today. But the record-breaking race on June 13 hardly drew a record-breaking crowd to Hollywood Park in Inglewood.
A little more than 12,000 people showed up. That’s about twice as many as usual these days, an embarrassing statistic compared to the massive crowds of 40,000 to 50,000 that once graced the famed venue.
Nevertheless, Zenyatta’s popularity is a glimmer of hope to the horse racing world, which is facing long odds for survival. Once considered the most popular spectator sport in the United States, the Sport of Kings has experienced drastic declines in attendance and slumping on-track handle — the amount of money wagered — that has resulted in venue closures, bankruptcies and relentless anxiety within the industry, even at the fabled furlongs of Arcadia’s Santa Anita Park.
“At one time, horse racing was a very important part of our culture,” said John Matviko, a long-time horse racing fan and author who is writing a book, “Horse Racing and American Popular Culture.”
Matviko started going to the track when he was 23. Now 62 and living in West Virginia, Matviko has witnessed racing’s decline in popularity firsthand.
“We have so many other things going on now, it’s been replaced,” Matviko said.
The total attendance on track at Santa Anita Park for the winter meet has shrunk by two-thirds over the last two decades — from more than 2 million during the 1989-1990 meet to about 625,000 in 2009-2010.
Across town, it’s no secret that Hollywood Park’s corporate owner is waiting for the housing market to rebound so it can turn the 72-year-old storied venue into a residential and commercial development.
Up north, Bay Meadows race track in San Mateo was demolished in 2008 and will be replaced with homes, shops, offices, restaurants and parks.
“One thing we can all agree upon is we need change,” said Mike Willman, director of publicity for Santa Anita Park. “We can’t keep doing the same ’ol, same ’ol.”
In essence, horse racing is at a crossroad: Give up or make one final attempt to transform back into a popular sport.
Just as racetrack officials are frantically coming up with ideas of how to change the game internally, an HBO series and a movie coming out this year, both featuring horse racing, could introduce the sport commercially on a larger scale and create interest in a way that only Hollywood could.
With countless jobs, dependent industries and a classic American pastime on the line, a rally in the homestretch is on everyone’s mind.
Changing the game
In an effort to figure out how to resuscitate the sport, the California Horse Racing Board held a contentious meeting on June 22 to discuss the future of racing with MI Developments, Inc. (MID), a real estate company based in Canada that owns several racing entities including Santa Anita Park. MID took the reins of Santa Anita after its subsidiary, Magna Entertainment Corporation (MEC), went bankrupt last year.
“The system doesn’t work anymore,” said MID Chairman Frank Stronach to a packed crowd and the board. “The model doesn’t work. We have to think. We have to create something new.”
MID, which must submit a business plan to the board by Sept. 1, had outlined a list of plans in a letter to the board in May that included seeking initiatives and legislative changes to make the industry more “commercially viable,” such as loosening restrictions on racing days, creating more mini-satellite wagering locations in the Los Angeles area and marketing new types of bets to draw younger fans.
Board members pointed out that racing has tried and failed to change the laws which govern the sport. The biggest blow came in 2004, when California voters rejected racing’s bid to allow slot machines at tracks.
“We’ve tried [creating legislation] and it came up with relatively little that we thought could actually be put through the Legislature,” said board Commissioner Jesse Choper.
One recent change that many view as hurtful is MID’s cancellation of its contract with Oak Tree Racing Association, a nonprofit group that has run a month-long fall meet at Santa Anita since 1969.
Oak Tree will run at Santa Anita for its 2010 meet, but must relocate in the coming years, Stronach said.
Oak Tree officials said the move will result in the layoff of many Santa Anita employees and compromise the track’s bid to become the permanent home of the Breeders’ Cup, a two-day international racing event that brings millions of dollars into the local economy. With troubles growing faster than solutions, horse racing’s time could be running out.
The sport of kings
Racetracks in California popped up in the 1930s, spurred by the state’s legalization of pari-mutuel wagering in 1933. Santa Anita Park, Hollywood Park and Del Mar racetrack were social centers for the rich and famous, with movie stars such as Clark Gable and Will Rogers appearing as regular turf club visitors.
The horses themselves, including Seabiscuit and Swaps, were held in the same regard as today’s Kobe Bryant or Brett Favre.
California tracks were the social epicenter, reaching the height of popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, remembered Willman, who started going to the races as a kid in the early 1960s and has since held a variety of jobs at the track.
“Santa Anita, Hollywood Park, Del Mar, the LA Country Fair — it was unbelievable,” he said. “They used to have to shut the admissions gates because the track was at capacity. We were averaging 30,000 a day. Racing was a happening.”
But the public’s interest in horse racing has been steadfastly drying up.
“Our culture, in terms of gambling, has changed,” said Matviko, whose book examines changes in American culture that have spurred the sport’s decline in popularity.
Not only have tracks lost their monopoly on gambling, but betting on horses is a detailed process involving past performances, trainer and jockey statistics, and track conditions.
“When there’s so many other ways to gamble out there, I don’t know that people want to put that effort in,” Matviko said. “Pulling the arm of a slot machine, that’s a lot easier.”
There’s also a lack of interest in the horses, trainers and jockeys that leaves little to report in the news, according to Matviko.
“Racing doesn’t have this superstar with a following that people begin to watch,” he said.
It’s more profitable in most cases to race and retire a horse early in its career than continuing to run it. Without a horse returning to race year after year, and becoming familiar to the public, the brand quickly fades from memory.
A public concern for animal welfare has also damaged racing’s reputation.
Finally, simulcast wagering, off-track betting and Internet wagering simply make it unnecessary to go to the track.
The finish line
A handful of Hollywood filmmakers have set out to bring horse racing to both the big and small screens.
An HBO series, “Luck,” starring Dustin Hoffman, will start filming at Santa Anita this fall. The show takes a “provocative look at the world of horse racing and gambling told through a diverse population of characters surrounding a race track,” according to HBO.
Walt Disney Pictures’ “Secretariat,” starring Diane Lane and John Malkovich and due out in October, tells the story of the 1973 Triple Crown winner and his owner, Penny Chenery.
Could Hollywood be the answer to racing’s troubles?
“We need to be more in the entertainment business than the racing business,” said Del Mar Thoroughbred Club CEO Joe Harper, adding that venues need to market the entertainment value of “a day at the races.”
Del Mar, the summer racing location for the Southern California circuit, is the only track where attendance rates have remained steady — about 600,000 to 700,000 per meet —throughout the past 20 years.
Not only does he run the most popular meet in the state, Harper comes from a Hollywood pedigree. His grandfather is legendary film director Cecil B. DeMille.
Like DeMille and the early founders of the film industry, race track pioneers in California were dogged and innovative in their approach to launching the horse racing industry, something that is lacking in today’s industry, Harper said. “We’ve lost the entrepreneurs. The marketing techniques are outdated,” he added.
Whether it is changing marketing, laws or public perception, coming up with a solution to racing’s problems is as difficult as hitting the pick-six. But popularity can strike like lightning.
Zenyatta, for instance, has attracted a following of admirers who, on race day, hold up signs that read “Zenyatta for Governor,” paint their faces with her racing silks colors, and cheer and take snapshots each time she passes.
“These horses are magnificent athletes,” said Willman. “Horse racing will always have a place. It’s just part of the American fabric.”
With that optimism and the workings of change, the coming months and years will determine if racing can come back to win.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT