Track operators say attendance no longer matters, but the fan count remains critical to the sport's future

Attendance does not seem important to a lot of people who run racetracks these days. It's all about betting handle, they say. While their actions may give the impression that on-track attendance is not as important today as it was several decades ago, how many people show up at the track is critical to the future of the sport and everyone who makes a livelihood in racing.

In the last decade, as intertrack wagering and whole-card simulcasting became the norm for the sport, some racetracks stopped reporting attendance. Attendance was not important, they said, because so many people were betting on their races off-site. And, since handle was increasing, things were just fine. To give you an idea of how times have changed, 84% of all bets today are placed off-track.

That alone tells you something about on-track attendance.

For decades, attendance and handle were always reported by each track in footnotes at the bottom of the last chart of the day in Daily Racing Form. The annual compilation of attendance and handle figures was memorialized in the American Racing Manual, published by Daily Racing Form, which reported pari-mutuel handle, attendance, and purse distribution for every track in North America.

That information disappeared from public view after 1996, when publication of the Racing Manual was suspended. When the book resumed publication in 2000, attendance and handle were no longer included because they cannot be obtained from all tracks. Total attendance figures for all of racing, once used by the Form to identify Thoroughbred racing as America's best-attended sport, are a relic of the past. (It should be noted that most tracks still conduct turnstile counts each day and often will report attendance at the end of a meet, but no systematic effort is made to quantify how many people attend off-track sites, particularly when no admission is paid.)

This flippant disregard for how many fans are going to the track is a puzzling development for those who follow sports, namely news media, which want to include such information in reports of sporting events, as is done for baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and every other sporting contest.

Newspaper editors also make decisions on coverage and space based on attendance-that is, how popular a sport is.

While attendance figures have disappeared from the scene, exactly how is betting handle doing? It depends on whom you talk to.

Because of the commingling of bets, there is a difference in reporting standards. When a bet is placed on a live race in Kentucky from a track in Illinois, for example, how is the bet reported? In some instances, apparently twice, by both the host track and the receiving track. How do we know? Because of the discrepancy in handle figures between several organizations that report wagering.

According to the Association of Racing Commissioners International (RCI), total handle on Thoroughbred racing in North America was $11.5-billion in 1999, the most recent year with complete data. According to the Jockey Club, which obtains its figures from Equibase, total handle in North America in 1999 was $14.4-billion. That represents a difference of $2.9-billion in handle between the two organizations. That's not even close.

In 1999, the total purse distribution in all of North America totaled $1,008,162,608. According to RCI figures, purses in North America represented 8.8% of total handle; according to Jockey Club figures, purses represented 7% of handle. (A portion of total purses also comes from sources other than pari-mutuel handle, such as slot-machine revenue, casino admission charges, contributions from a portion of states' share of handle, revenues to purses from sponsorship money, and purses from such organizations as Breeders' Cup Ltd., among others.)

Those people who think that only handle counts very likely cannot provide a good answer on the exact state of affairs in the wagering area.

Which brings us back to attendance.

The only sure way to increase handle is to have more customers-the lifeblood of the sport-attending races.

Racing executives should stop the charade of not reporting attendance. If they are embarrassed by the declining numbers, they need to work on getting more people out to the track.