NEWS
Monmouth to offer elite 50-day, $50-million meet
Posted: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 10:37 AM
MONMOUTH PARK
Bill Denver/Equi-Photo
by Tom De Martini
Monmouth Park will host an elite 50-day summer meeting featuring an average of $1-million per day in purses under an agreement announced on Tuesday between the New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority and the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association.
The pact lifts the Oceanport, New Jersey, racetrack into the country’s top echelon in purses, eclipsing the planned $723,000 per day in prize money slated by the New York Racing Association for the recently expanded 40-day Saratoga Race Course meeting in Saratoga Springs, New York.
The bold one-year deal, contingent upon the approval of state lawmakers and the New Jersey Racing Commission, cuts live racing from 141 dates and does not include a fall Thoroughbred meeting at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
The revised 2010 Monmouth season will run from May 22 through September 6 with racing on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays as well as the Monday holidays of Memorial Day, July 5, and Labor Day. Twelve races are scheduled each day.
A second 21-day meeting will be held from September 12 through November 21 with Saturday and Sunday racing. Average daily purse levels for that meet are pegged at between $250,000 and $300,000.
Monmouth Park General Manager Robert Kulina said planning for the dramatic change in the summer racing season began following the rain-plagued 2007 Breeders’ Cup World Championships with the assistance of Dennis Drazin, former president of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.
“We saw what works; the player wants a better product with full fields,” Kulina said. “Looking into the future, we feel this is what racing in the country will look like. We’re cautiously optimistic that the model will work out. The goal is to sell more bets.”
Track officials will utilize $2.27-million in unpaid purses from the 2009 Monmouth meeting and approximately $20-million from the final year of a subsidy from the Casino Association of New Jersey to feed the unprecedented $1-million purse structure.
Last year, Monmouth offered a daily average of $330,000 in purses over 93 live dates. The new daily purse structures are gaudy with bottom-level $5,000 claiming races carrying $30,000 purses. Maiden special weight races, including New Jersey-bred maiden races, will offer $75,000 purses.
Restricted allowance races will begin at $80,000 and increase by $5,000 increments to $90,000. Overnight stakes purses weigh in at $100,000 in addition to $5-million in graded stakes funding.
Kulina said the purse of the Haskell Invitational Stakes (G1) for three-year-olds on August 1—the track’s signature event—will remain at $1-million.
The Meadowlands Cup (G2) and Pegasus Stakes (G3) will be moved from the Meadowlands to Monmouth. The Violet Stakes (G3) and the Cliff Hanger Stakes (G3), both Meadowlands events, will not be run this year.
Monmouth’s backstretch houses 1,600 horses. Kulina is hopeful that many out-of-town outfits will ship to New Jersey to take advantage of the new purse structure.
“Horsemen are free agents and go where the money is,” Kulina said. “I expect shippers from Churchill Downs when that meet closes and response in the [Mid-Atlantic] region should be solid.”
Kulina said he expects solid wagering numbers on average fields of eight to ten horses per race.
New Jersey-breds are guaranteed 2.5 races per day under the deal with state-breds receiving bonus funds for in-the-money finishes in open company in addition to an out-of-state bonus program when Monmouth is closed.
“We’re concerned about our local horsemen and our smaller horsemen,” NJTHA acting president John Forbes said. “But we would die a slow death and there’s no other way to save ourselves from some sort of extinction.”
Kulina admitted that handle on Monmouth racing will need to double in order to sustain a $1-million purse level in 2011, when the casino subsidy runs out.
“That’s the gamble we’re taking. The [simulcast] signal will be stronger, more people will be paying attention to it, and we’ve made some soft projections,” he said.
The track averaged more than $409,000 in average on-track daily handle last year and $3.1-million in all-sources handle.
The revised racing schedule marks the fewest number of dates at Monmouth Park since 2001, when the track hosted 72 live programs. The New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority reportedly has a $13-million deficit on its racing operations this year alone.
Lawmakers must amend current statutes mandating 141 live Thoroughbred dates through 2016 in order for the state’s off-track and Internet wagering platforms to continue operations.
Tom De Martini is a New Jersey-based Thoroughbred Times correspondent
