Attendance, Handle Up at Track

The numbers are in for the first month of quarter horse racing at Los Alamitos and they buck national trends.

Quarter horse race track attendance and handle remain in the doldrums in most parts of the country, but figures were up, to record levels in some cases, at Los Alamitos. That came as a pleasant surprise to General Manager Dick Feinberg, who had projected decreases in nearly all categories for the first month of the meeting.

“Curiously, we did some things at the start that we thought would be negative factors on these numbers,” he said. “Yet, those things haven’t hurt us like we thought.”

According to figures released by the track, average overall daily handle for the first 18 dates of racing climbed to $1,245,413, a 19% jump over the track’s average record handle of $1,044,025 set in 1995.

The on-track handle climbed a mere 2%, but attendance was up 3% to 5% per night.

Even more impressive, though, were off-track betting statistics in the first month of what is scheduled to be a nine-month racing program.

Bets placed on Los Alamitos races via satellite wagering from inside California increased 6%, while out-of-state betting was up 200%. Los Alamitos races are seen at nearly 200 sites from California to Connecticut, Mexico to Colombia.

Feinberg was scratching his head the other day trying to explain the news, but he wasn’t complaining much, either.

Good weather may have played a major role in attendance, he said.

“Last year during the spring part of the meet the weather didn’t warm up until late June,” he said. “This year, the weather has just been gorgeous every night.”

The track increased the size of fields and boosted purses by an average of $1,200, attracting better horses, Feinberg said. In addition, by changing the way bets can be placed, carry-over pools on carry-over bets like the Pick Six and Twin Trifectas have become larger. For example, Feinberg pointed out, there’s a Pick Six carry-over of about $30,000 tonight.

Several changes made at the start of the program figured to cut into betting. The track discontinued several longtime incentives for regular bettors, including free annual clubhouse passes and free admission to the Paddock Club on Thursday nights. It upgraded the Vessels Room into a casino-like dining area and instituted a dress code that would make an average horseman think twice about entering, and then charged $8 a head just to get in the door.

Majority owner Edward C. Allred, who has spent more than $12 million on improvements so far, is betting that spiffing up the interior of the track will bring in new patrons.

A spokesman for the American Quarter Horse Assn. said the performance by Los Alamitos has been encouraging to the industry, which is under competitive pressures from high-stakes bingo, Indian reservation gaming casinos and river boat gambling.

“We’ve got lots of problems around the country, but we are very lucky to have Los Alamitos. It’s anchoring quarter horse racing in this country,” said Dan Fick, AQHA director of racing.

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Where is the increase in off-track betting coming from?

Places like Illinois.

More than $15.7 million was wagered in that state on Los Alamitos races last year, according to an article in the May issue of The Quarter Racing Journal. That’s second-best in the nation, behind the $79 million bet at California tracks via satellite on Los Alamitos races.

It figures to grow too.

“Last year at this time we didn’t have Illinois satellite betting in operation yet,” Feinberg said.

The Journal suggests that Los Alamitos is benefiting from its added exposure in two ways:

1. Two-thirds of its handle now comes from off-track bets.

2. By sending its signal all over the country it’s in a position to attract new fans to quarter horse racing.

Fick, of the AQHA, said he was in Calgary last week and was asked how tracks in Alberta can pick up the Los Alamitos signal.

“Los Alamitos is good for quarter horse racing and it is in a great position because their simulcast signal is very well received,” Fick said.

Among other things, Los Alamitos is gaining popularity with East Coast betting establishments because the three-hour time difference allows those places to extend betting into the early morning hours.

Allred points out that satellite wagering has kept his business afloat. He said the key to a rebound in the popularity of quarter horse racing lies with attracting younger crowds, many of whom don’t care to come to the track, but are more likely to place bets via television.

Notes

The $180,000 Kindergarten Futurity for 2-year-olds is scheduled to run Friday. Secret Seraph led all horses in qualifying, covering the 350 yards in 17.74 seconds. . . Secret Seraph has raced only twice so far, but Winalota Cash remains the runaway front-runner in the latest National Quarter Horse Poll. The 1995 top money-winner won both times out this season. Last year Winalota Cash raced only 11 times, but won seven and finished second in the others. “There’s always a horse that stands out in the minds of every rider when you are through riding and this is the one for me,” jockey Billy Peterson said. “I don’t know if there will ever be a horse quite like this one. It has raw talent, raw speed, intelligence. This one has the brand of a heart on its hip.” . . . Jockey Eddie Aceves, aboard IB Quick, and trainer Jose Flores picked up their first stakes win in the $20,000 Double Bid handicap last Friday. . . Sam Taire, which won the $30,000 Sierra Knights race last Friday, has taken 10 of its 22 starts. . . That was Tami Purcell, one of the top jockeys in the nation, picking up two wins Saturday aboard Samuri in the Spring Handicap and Saltiki in the Distaff Arabian stakes. The horses were trained by Billy Lewis. . . The gelding Silent Salute tripled its lifetime earnings with a victory in the $30,000 ARAC Classic. . . . To see race results on the Los Alamitos home page (https://www.losalamitos.com) via the World Wide Web viewers need a graphical browser that supports viewing images.