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Well, Monmouth had Rachel Alexandra, and Saratoga had so much rain that it flooded out Danny Meyer's hot new Shake Shack restaurant. But, no surprise, guess which track had the better performance on July 23-25, Saratoga's opening weekend? For the three days, Saratoga had paid attendance of 62,243, versus Monmouth's 28,365. Even on Saturday, with Rachel Alexandra at the shore, Monmouth drew only 12,859. The same day, with the highlight at saratoga the Coaching Club American Oaks, won by Devil May Care, Saratoga drew 20,352. On-track handle for the three days at Monmouth was $1,975,627. At Saratoga, where there were 6 fewer races, on-track handle was more than four times as much, at $8,638,566. Similarly, all-sources handle for the weekend at Monmouth was $24,130,504, while at Saratoga it was $43,431,852. Monmouth did much better, comparatively, on its simulcast, OTB and ADW betting, but even with Rachel Alexandra running Saturday, it didn't equal Saratoga's handle on...

Much has been made of this year's big increases in attendance, handle, field size and purses registered by Monmouth Park in its innovative three-day-a-week race meet. Halfway through the summer meet, attendance is up 13% over last year, at 10,500 a day; all-sources handle has more than doubled, from $3.5 million a day last year to $7.7 million; and on-track handle is up 43%, much more than the corresponding increase in on-track attendance. So, it seems, Monmouth's ballyhooed "million dollars a day" in purses for a shorter meet appears to be the wave of the future. Meanwhile, the New York Racing Association's Belmont spring-summer meet seems to have been lost in the financial mess that is New York racing, with the performance of the horses and the track buried by news of the state government's continuing ineptitude over putting slot machines at Aqueduct, a mere nine years after they were authorized, and of the continuing failure of New York City Off-Track Bett...

Earlier this year, displaying the political sense that has so often eluded it, the New York Racing Association (NYRA) agreed to turn over its financial records to State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli so the latter could conduct an audit of NYRA's shaky finances. NYRA had previously unleashed its stable of pit-bull lawyers in an effort to block the Comptroller's request, a position that drew widespread criticism , and the turnaround in February seemed a smart move. Perhaps it even helped NYRA convince the otherwise clueless politicians in Albany that they had to make good on their contractual promises to advance NYRA the money it was losing as a result of the state's endless dithering on awarding a contract for slot machines at Aqueduct. But yesterday, the other shoe dropped. Comptroller DiNapoli released his audit of NYRA , complete with a scare-laden press release. DiNapoli concluded that NYRA should somehow scale back the level of its operations to what would be sustainable...

Since the emergence of cable and satellite television services there has been struggles among platforms to increase their attractiveness to audiences and to draw market share from terrestrial television in developed nations. These struggles have had affected content producers, broadcasters, platform operators and regulators attempting to fashion socially optimal broadcasting systems. In the first competitive struggles between terrestrial broadcasters and cable operators, broadcasters controlled the highest quality contemporary programming and cable operators primarily competed by offering a wider variety of channels and providing premium movie channels. In many locations broadcasters actively sought regulatory policies to keep their channels from appearing on cable in order to reduce its attractiveness as a competitor. As cable matured and satellite services emerged, the nature of the struggle shifted as greater subscription and advertising revenues allowed cable networks to o...

Tom Precious of the Blood-Horse is reporting that Delaware North, one of the six registered bidders for the long-delayed Aqueduct slot machine contract, is pulling out of the bidding. Bids are due at 4 pm today in the latest attempt to name a racino operator. Delaware North is one of the more experienced slot-machine operators among the six potential bidders, with some 10,000 slot machines scattered across the US, including the racino at the upstate New York Finger Lakes track. Presumably, the company knows how to do its sums before making a bid, so its last-minute decision to pull out is, well, troubling. Although no one at Delaware North was speaking publicly, Precious cites unnamed sources as saying that the reasons for the pullout included the 1% cut in operator fees included in the latest version of the New York state budget, the requirement that the winning bidder pony up $300 million BEFORE negotiating a final agreement with the state, and doubts as to whether New York State ca...

Now that Churchill Downs Inc.'s annual meeting is over, it's an opportune time to take a close look at the leading US race track operator's financials. As we've pointed out here in prior years, Churchill has a long-term strategy of increasing the profits from its online betting operations (Twin Spires and the newly merged YouBet) and casino gambling (in Louisiana, and now at Calder in Florida), while managing the ongoing decline of revenue from live racing. That trend continues to be evident in Churchill's numbers the calendar year 2009 and for the first quarter of 2010. In fact, it appears that the trend is accelerating. In comments at yesterday's annual meeting, and in an interview with the Lexington KY Courier-Journal , Churchill CEO Bob Evans (definitely not a racing guy) said that the future of live racing at Arlington Park in Chicago -- without slot machines and without access to loans from the Illinois state government -- was in serious doubt, ands, e...

Following hearings on the state of newspapers this past year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission staff has now prepared a discussion paper of potential policy recommendations to support the reinvention of journalism. It is a classic example of policy-making folly that starts from the premise that the government can solve any problem—even one created by consumer choices and an inefficient, poorly managed industry. Most of the proposals are based in the idea of using government mechanisms to protect newspapers against competitors and to create markets for newspapers offline and online. The FTC’s staff ignores the fact that most newspapers are profitable (the average operating profit in 2009 was 12%), but that their corporate parents are unprofitable because of high overhead costs and ill-advised debt loads taken on when advertising revenues were peaked at all time highs. It also fails to make adequate distinction between longer term trends affecting newspapers and the effects of the c...