The popular Thoroughbred and Harness Google Track Takeout Maps have been updated. There are still a few mysteries (tracks missing takeout data), and if there are any new tracks that need to be added or old tracks that need to be deleted, or takeouts that are incorrect, please leave a comment and corrections will be made.
View Thoroughbred Racetracks in a larger map
View Harness Racetracks in a larger map
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Hialeah opens their short quarter horse meet today. They are doing something phenomenal for Horseplayers: A 12% track takeout on all wagers. Many studies suggest that the optimal takeout for horse racing is somewhere between 10-12%, the optimal takeout being the price where tracks and horsemen make the most money.
Last year, Hialeah only did around $100,000 a day in handle. Wouldn’t it be great to see that number double or triple this year thanks to increased churn and meeting many a Horseplayer’s desire for lower takeouts? This is a great opportunity to give the industry some hard core evidence that lowering takeout will work.
The problem with this takeout reduction is that many internet betting sites are not offering Hialeah to their customers.
It makes me question whether there is a conspiracy going on. It is no skin off an ADW’s nose to add a track. Why then are Twinspires, TVG, XPressBet, HPI, and NYRA Rewards not offering Hialeah? When I looked at their menus this morning Hialeah was nowhere to be found.
The fee that Hialeah charges for its signal is most likely minimal, and there will be a lot more churn thanks to the takeout reduction, so the argument that they are not making enough money is bogus. Besides, the overwhelming majority of smaller ADWs have Hialeah on the menu.
To my knowledge most, if not all of the major ADWs offered Hialeah last year, so the excuse that there is not demand for the product doesn’t wash either, because if anything, there will be more demand this year thanks to the lower takeout.
Does the fact that California will have a takeout increase in place come December 26th have something to do with it? Or that a few of these ADWs own racetracks that have much higher takeouts have something to do with it? Do they want this venture to fail so that pressure is not placed on them to lower takeout?
One thing is certain, ADWs not offering Hialeah do not have their customer’s best interest at heart. In fact, the customer is being completely disregarded.
There is a lot of buzz on the internet already. Check out this thread on Pace Advantage.
I urge all Horseplayers to make as much of an effort as possible to support Hialeah and their takeout decrease by playing it.
TrackMaster has recently revamped their speed figures for Quarter Horse Racing, if you are looking for decent past performance help.
Lets hope this isn’t lip service. It looks like NYRA is starting to get it.
NYRA Chair Steve Duncker from an interview earlier this week:
“Duncker noted the blended rates in New York were 15% in 1960, 17% in 1970, and 19.81% in 2010. Over that period, racing has faced growing competition from other forms of gambling that employ takeout rates of 2%-10%.
What business people in this audience think thats the way to increase business? Duncker said. Were being priced out of this market. We need to bring the cost of our product down in a competitive market.
And on CNBC, NYRA CEO Charles Hayward was interviewed. This is a must see video (not very long) for anyone who cares about the growth of horse racing:
I personally love the use of the description “counter intuitive” that Hayward uses to describe the effects of track takeout.
“We’re taking too much out of the customer’s pocket…..the more money we put back in the people’s hands, the more they’ll bet back in.”
The interviewer was pretty much representing the intuitive point of view, which is wrong, that the price to “put on the show” forces takeout rates to have to be higher. This is far from the truth. The cost to put on the show is pretty much a constant (except when it comes to cutting or adding dates, or adding or cutting purse money…which is predicated on the amount of betting the track takes in). Using the example of Fort Erie Slots. Lets say it costs $25 million operate the slot side 7 days a week. This cost has no bearing on how much is lost by customers.
The only thing that matters is the price of the bet. Slot operators have found a long time ago that their optimal payback rate (the amount of money that maximizes profits for slots) is around 92-95%). In terms of a racetrack, that equals a track takeout of around 7%. What this means is that if the slot takeout is doubled, for example, to 14%, it would attract less than half the long term betting than at 7%.
It doesn’t matter if the operation costs were $2 million or $30 million. What matters in gambling is how much the customer gets in return.
Yes, it is counter intuitive, but that is how gambling works. The longer a player lasts, the more they enjoy it, the more they are likely to return. The more money a customer leaves a gambling establishment with, the more likely they are to come back quicker.
Three more good things happen when it comes to growth by reducing takeout. First, the longer a person lasts, the more likely they are to expose friends and family to their hobby. This potentially creates a new audience.
Secondly, a player who spends more time handicapping and watching races will likely devote more of their entertainment and gambling bank roll to horse racing and less to other forms of gambling.
And third, the lower the takeout, the more likely some visible winners will be created. Visible winners helped poker explode. For the most part, there has to be a good reason for a newbie to begin tackling horse racing’s enormous learning curve. They need to be able to rationalize a reason to buy a handicapping book in the first place. If long term winning is impossible (with a 20% chop it certainly is impossible), why even look into betting on horses?
I should also make it clear, that takeout can be reduced to as close to zero as possible. There is an optimum takeout, where tracks and horsemen make the most money, but it differs for each type of gamble. The optimum takeout or house edge in blackjack or poker is lower than the optimum takeout for horse racing wagers. One of the main reasons for this is the frequency of wagers per hour, and the fact that no matter how enticing horse racing becomes, there will still be quite a few players who will only play a little per week, month, etc. Much of their churn will go elsewhere, other than back to the track.
In fact, each type of wager has different optimum takeouts associated with it. Show betting has a lower optimum takeout than win bets for example, and much lower than triactors.
Since, there is no empirical evidence to use when it comes to horse racing (as horse racing as always charged its customers too much), I can only estimate. Right now, I figure the optimum takeout for show betting is around 5-6% with no breakage. Win betting is probably 7-9%. Exactors and doubles around 9-10%, and triactors and other exotics fall in the 12-14% range.
Those Morons In California
Those morons, yes morons, in California are going to learn a very big lesson. It is going to get ugly there very soon. I think this is the first time HANA ever got mentioned in the DRF. Personally, if they do raise takeout in California, I will not even look at another past performance from there (except for Breeders Cup Day). I won’t be the only one who will personally boycott their racing. They need leaders there who get it. Those who understand that it might be the intuitive thing to do to raise takeout so purses will grow, but who know that it will lead to a very bad decline in their bottom line.
The infighting continues as some of California finest imbeciles like the takeout increase but are dead set against exchange betting. If I didn’t know better (and I don’t), it appears that bill AB 2414′s sponsor, Assembly speaker John Perez, has screwed up by seemingly being bought off by nincompoop’s who believe that upping the takeout will benefit California tracks and horsemen, and Betfair at the same time. Politicians sometimes do things that street whores wouldn’t do when it comes to campaign contributions and other perks. I don’t expect Perez to be different, but he really messed up by attaching both exchange betting and a takeout hike on the same bill.
DISINGENUOUS QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I would accept that an increased take out of any kind would be unpalatable. However, as that same horseplayer, I want to see a healthy sport that has the chance of a long-term future and people with much more knowledge than me of California racing believe this will help the sport. It is worth noting that other states already have take outs that exceed California. In the UK, there is a healthy Tote industry and some of the most successful bets have a take out of 30%.
To me, we should be looking at how to rebate price sensitive customers so that skilled horseplayers who put a lot of money into pools are given a loyalty bonus or rakeback. I struggle to understand why US racing is so willing to cooperate with offshore rebate shops that suck the life out of the sport. We should be exploring ways of bringing that business back onshore and, at the same time, rewarding regular players with rebates. It should be the operator that stands the price of those rebates and not the sport but they could only do that if working out the right pricing formula all round. Irrespective of what happens to AB2414, I hope that issue will be explored by the industry.”
-Stephen Burn TVG CEO(via Paulick Report)
I find what Burns said to be disingenuous to an enormous degree based on his comments.
He of all people should realize that rebates or lowering takeout isn’t about appeasing price sensitive and big players, but giving all players an opportunity to last longer, spend more time betting on horses, and opening the door to the chance that some can win which will create a whole new market of wannabes (this has been the key to Betfair’s success).
Andy, I agree, he is full of it. He isn’t a stupid guy.
He realizes that the higher the takeout in California, the more likely people will turn off parimutuel and bet on the exchange.
Secondly, he realizes he needs to invent reasons why a takeout increase makes sense so as to support the bill, which will get Betfair in the door.
Now, I’m not saying exchange betting is bad for the industry, in fact, parimutuel wagering has risen wherever Betfair has shown up. But Burns is playing with the media right now.
There is no way he believes that the increase in takeout will add to the health of the racing industry in California. I’m not buying it for a minute.
Delaware Park Doing Something Good
Delaware Park is doing a two month “experiment” starting September 4th. They are lowering the takeout on exactors for those who bet live at the track from 19% to 10%.
It isn’t a huge thing. Not a lot of money is wagered on exactors per race on track at Delaware (most of their handle is from other tracks and ADWs across North America). However, it is a small step in the right direction.
They are hoping this will bring some extra people to the track who would normally bet through one of the bigger ADWs. And they will hopefully get bigger wagers on their product live.
What will happen is that Horseplayers will get more money to play with if they hit an exactor. That money will be churned back almost automatically either on the next few Delaware races or simulcast races. Players will last longer, but the reality is that they will quickly lose that money back into high takeout bets for the most part.
Reduction in takeout to work, needs to be long term, and needs to be an industry wide thing if you want to measure total success.
The Delaware promo will be successful, but it won’t be huge. But when it comes to horse racing, baby steps in the right direction are better than standing in your excrement, something horse racing seems to be famous for.
Bruno Schickedanz denies temporary stay at Woodbine by ORC
Some emotional quotes by other trainers and his former trainers didn’t help Bruno’s case. No reasons yet have been given as to why Schickedanz can’t race or stable at Woodbine, other than Schickedanz did something against the good of racing.
I think they need to revise the rule books at the ORC so that a case like this will be clearly against the rules, and should never happen again.
I don’t know how that ORC can justify a Woodbine ban, but allow Schickedanz to continue to race and stable at Fort Erie.
BEYER LIKE SPEED FIGURES GIVE TRACKMASTER PAST PERFORMANCES A BIG EDGE
Good points are made in this TrackMaster blog post about the harness game and why there is good value in using their past performances.
Balmoral Pick 4 handle is up 84% since they lowered their takeout from 25% to 15%.
Want more evidence? At the beginning of the year, Tioga Downs horsemen allowed the track to lower the takeout, as low as the state would allow them. Vernon Downs voted NO. So far, Tioga Downs is up on the year when it comes to handle, while Vernon Downs is down 13%.
Lowering takeout does take time for the results to kick in, and Tioga is starting to notice a nice ramp up lately. Export handle was up over 20% in July.
It is key to keep takeout down, so existing players won’t leave, but by dropping them, new players will be created as existing players last longer, come more often, and are more likely to introduce newbies to the game.
Speaking of evidence. What evidence is the CHRB using when it comes to their desire to increase takeout in California? I’d love to know. How could they possibly think that taxing their customers more on each bet will result in more revenue for them? What studies are they using? What empirical evidence do they have?
The reality is they “think” that they must be selling a necessity big ticket item. The fact is they are not. Gamblers only have so much money to lose collectively. Pay them off less, and they will come back less, or quit, or find a competing form of gambling. No matter how you slice it, up the takeout, and the result will be less revenue bottom line. And more importantly, negative growth when it comes to future horseplayers.
Even the guys at Bloodhorse are laughing at California’s stupidity:
The last time California increased takeout, they “thought” it would be the answer to their short term woes. Empirical evidence proved otherwise.
New Anti-Gambling Laws Come To Canada
Whoa, does this means that office football and hockey pool participants and organizers risk a minimum sentence of five years in jail?
Well, at least she gambled legally
…but the way she acquired the funds to play with, well that is another story. I guess with her in jail, casino revenues are bound to drop a bit.
Tomorrow, Woodbine will open the doors for their 2010 thoroughbred season, and they’ve decided to dedicate this year to the horseplayer by dropping track takeouts to industry low levels.
WPS bets will now be offered at 15%. All exotics will be have a takeout of 18%, with the exception of triactors which will have a takeout of 19.5%. The takeouts used to be 16.95% for WPS, 20.5% for exactors and doubles, 25% for Pick 4′s and Pick 6′s, 26.3% for superfectas and Pick 3′s, and 27% for triactors.
They’ve also shaved their distribution fee by a point as well, so as to still encourage all USA based and offshore ADWs to keep taking their signal.
The hardest part of making this change was convincing the Ontario HBPA that their contract needed to be changed because their percentages had to be prorated for this to work. It took a lot of meetings, but the astute Woodbine executives team was able to finally convince the horsemen that when takeout drops, players will churn back the extra money they won, so the bottom line will be at least the same. Of course, when horseplayers last longer, and spend more time handicapping, betting and watching races, they may forgo other forms of gambling, and more importantly, start introducing their family and friends to the great game of horse racing, and this potential for strong growth has apparently excited both horsemen and WEG executives alike.
Because track takeouts were being cut to close to three quarters of what they used to be, instead of receiving an extra 2% on all wagers, the horsepeople have agreed to receive an extra 1.5% on each dollar bet instead, and an additional 1.5% on triactors.
In order to get the horsemen to go along with this monumental effort, Woodbine promised to keep purse levels at least the same this year, and next year. An executive stated off the record that “Woodbine was planning to announce a 15% purse cut on the thoroughbred side, just like they did on the standardbred side, by August 1st, if this agreement failed.”
The same executive, who stressed she wanted to stay anonymous, said that “Things are so much brighter now that Davey is giving up control. It is like Woodbine finally got rid of the monkey on its back.” She then joked, “He’ll still be around for a few months doing the only thing he is any good at, collecting his big fat pay check.”
The government agencies too had to go along with this plan. It took about twelve meetings but they finally understood the math behind the cuts and what churn means, so it was agreed that the Ontario Government will now receive .385% instead of .5% on each dollar wagered, while the Canadian Government will now retain .615% instead of .8% on each dollar wagered for the provision of drug control, photo-finish, video patrol and audit services.
But that isn’t all. Newly appointed WEG Token Racial Minority V.P. Ravi Singh Singhasong stated that “instead of using the term “Take Out Adjustments,” which is too lengthy a term anyway, money put into HPI accounts based on how much a horseplayer bets, will now be referred to as “Rebates.” We will now be giving out Rebates to all HPI members on every bet they make with no weekly minimum. All bets made through HPI will now receive at least 2% paid out weekly. Those who bet over $5,000 a week will receive rebates of 4% on all wagers, and those who wager $10,000 a week or more will receive 6%. The exception is that there are certain tracks that we can only pay rebates of 2% on because of contractual restrictions, so we be informing our bigger betting customers that it might be in their best interest to avoid playing those tracks.”
“We also convinced the horsemen to pay for half the rebate and they seemed to understood that the rebate money would be bet back in almost every case, so in the end they would wind up with at least close to the same, but probably a whole lot more,” said Singhasong.
Ravi continued, “We will also now pay our customers whatever the US tracks pay on all bets, and therefore cease taking a cut out of the horseplayers winnings if they hit a triactor on a California race, for example. It is just bad Karma to rip off the horseplayer, really bad Karma. No more bad Karma.”
“One more surprise,” Singh Singhasong went on, “we are giving our customers their breakage. It is 2010, we had computers that could figure out exact payoffs to the penny years ago. We don’t use chalk boards for the odds anymore, and haven’t for some time. There is no reason not to give our customer all their money, not just most of it, they earned it. So that is what we are going to do.”
Asked what triggered this seemingly new philosophy, Singhasong said, “Besides having a new visionary guiding us, we looked at our business model, and the lack of growth that has resulted. The fact that we have been losing horseplayers and potential horseplayers to Betfair, online poker, sports betting, and offshore ADWs. We finally decided enough is enough, lets bloody well compete for their business…..we know that at Woodbine, we have a very good racing product, but a terrible betting product, the track takeouts rates we had before today were the laughing stock amongst all knowledgeable gamblers.”
“What pushed us overboard, though, was seeing the continued growth and success of Tampa Bay Downs with their gradual takeout reductions, and compared it with the awful, rancid, dreadful decline at Calder Race Course. Then we looked at our numbers, and we have the same handle that Calder has today, almost half of what Tampa Bay does daily. Look at our purse structure compared to Tampa, if not for slots, we’d be running for peanuts. We realized our model is broken, so now we will fix it.”
Ravi and the rest of the WEG decision makers must have figured out that during their 2002-2003 meet, Tampa Bay did $2,550,096 per day in handle, and after a couple of takeout reductions, now appears to be averaging over $4,000,000 a day this meet, while Calder did $397,369 in handle per race back in 2003, and only did $235,000 per race in handle in 2009. Calder foolishly increased takeout early in 2008.
Instead of a gradual decrease in takeout like Tampa Bay has done, Woodbine has decided to grab the bull by the horns.
“Gradual Shmadual,” said Singh Singhasong, “2010 is THE YEAR OF THE HORSEPLAYER AT WOODBINE, oh and one more thing, APRIL FOOLS’ DAY.”
