2009 Del Mar racing season guide

Don’t bother showing up to the Del Mar Fairgrounds on Mondays during race season.

That is, unless you loathe crowds.  And horses. And you crave vast swaths of empty dusty parking lot.

There are a couple of big changes to the 2009 racing season, which kicks off on Wednesday, July 22. The most noticeable is the reduction of the weekly racing cards from six days to five, leaving the track falling quiet on Mondays.

Don’t fret, though. Chances are it won’t make a difference to you. While the track averaged 16,000 fans per day in 2008, about half that number bothered showing up on Mondays. People must have been too busy reveling in the beginning of their work weeks.

Whatever the reason, singling out Monday made for an easy decision when the topic of cutting a day came up.

So why the cut? It’s the economy, stupid!

OK. It’s not that simple. But the sluggish economy combined with the low Monday turnout made for what appears to be a savvy business decision by race organizers.

Axe the slowest day of the week, beef up other days with some of the displaced races (three to be exact) and give the people a better product on the days they actually show up.

“The economy’s obviously not good for the game,” said Craig Dado, vice president for marketing at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club.  “We think by eliminating Mondays and concentrating on the other five strong days, it’s really going to help our numbers this season.”

Only time - and the race season - will tell.

And again - it’s not as simple as the economy. A less obvious but prevalent factor to the cut is the lack of available race horses. There just aren’t as many racing colts and fillies in California as there used to be.

Breeders aren’t breeding and owners aren’t buying. At least not like they used to. It’s tough to fill up a six-day slate with a limited pool. So what’s the reasoning this time?

You guessed it. Money. Breeding is expensive. Maintaining horses is expensive. Consider the two-year gap between the time a horse is born and the time it’s ready to compete, and there’s a lot of risk involved.

But the reduction in breeding started before the economic downturn. People were getting out of the game when business — in general — was booming.

With the cost of keeping a horse (training, food, horseshoes, etc.) at roughly $3,000 a month, owning an uncompetitive race horse doesn’t make sense in any economy - especially this one.

“It’s tough on horse owners and breeders to make money in this business,” said DMTC vice president of racing, Tom Robbins. “We rely on horse owners to make our business go. In better economic times, they can spend those discretionary dollars more aptly than in the last year or so.”

It’s left Robbins and other leaders in the racing community searching for incentives to keep breeders breeding. Robbins cites the California Breeders Association’s efforts to redistribute award money and give bonuses to first-time winners in addition to their purse winnings.

Del Mar, which can house 2,200 horses, offers free boarding for competing horses during race season. It’s all in an effort to keep racing alive and well in California.

And that’s where it comes back to the racing fan, which the DMTC is making great strides to lure to the track. The second big change this season is the Free and Easy Wednesdays promotion, which is full of incentives to get butts in seats.

In a similar effort to the Padres 5-for-$5 deal, Del Mar is offering half-priced beer, soda and hot dogs to Wednesday patrons. And they’re letting people in for free. For fans that sign up for their free Diamond Club membership program, free admission, seats and programs, as well as the food discounts, come into play every Wednesday of the racing season except for opening day.

Whether you keep that extra cash in your pockets or take it to the ticket windows is up to you.

In addition to the schedule change and Wednesday freebies, you can find the usual beer festivals, stakes races and rock ‘n’ roll that comes with the Del Mar race season. A full calendar of events can be found here.

Happy race season!

Tags: 2009 season, Del Mar, Del Mar Racetrack, Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, horses, racing, SDNN

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Business, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.