Thanks for covering the closure of Pompano Park and the warnings to other racetracks. I am one of the few today that enjoys watching and betting on both Thoroughbred and harness racing. I am from the Philadelphia area and grew up spending many a summer weekend going to both Delaware Park and Brandywine Raceway.
For years, both breeds were popular here, but over the years we lost both major harness tracks, Brandywine and Liberty Bell Park. Even two of our primer Thoroughbred tracks, Garden State Park and Atlantic City Race Course, are now history. But so far we still have both breeds racing locally at Parx, Delaware Park and Harrah's Philadelphia. So far even though all the tracks have casinos the operators have given racing reasonable dates and promotion.
However, all of the operators seem to give the most attention to the casino side of the business. If you enter the casino, you most likely don't even know horse racing could be going on. Casino gambling will in most cases will always be more profitable to the operating companies. The speed of the betting and the fact it operates 24/7 in most states simply by its volume will always generate more revenue than live racing that only operates several hours and not every day, and in many cases, not year round.
Racing now also has less revenue due to many people staying home and betting off track. So as in the case of Pompano Park where the casino generates the most money and the land it built on is more valuable for redevelopment than use for racing. It is hard to justify operating a racetrack unless it can produce consistently good betting and the operator feels that there is good crossover betting on both racing and casino operations.
If racing is to continue longterm, we need cheerleaders like Gabe [Prewitt] at Pompano who did his best to pull in as many bettors as possible to play their races. We as players also have to do our part and attend the live racing on track as often as possible.
See you at my local tracks.
John Chambers, Lansdowne, PA
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