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View Winners → Santa Anita Autumn Meet Extends 11 weeks Next Year
Arcadia Weekly Jul 18, 2013
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By Terry Miller
With the termination of Hollywood Park horse racing, comes beneficial news for Arcadia, and especially Santa Anita Race Track in 2014.
Mike Willman, Director of Publicity for the track confirmed that, in fact, next year the season will be extended considerably. All this plus the addition of Breeders’ Cup in 2014 is a win – win for the community at large.
Good news for racing fans and could be even better news for area business as well as the city although perhaps not that significant.
Arcadia City Manager, Dominic Lazaretto told Beacon Media “As of today, in Fiscal Year 2012-13 we’ve received $679,710. We expect to accrue an additional $10,000 before closing the year, which would bring the total to about $690,000. In FY 2011-12, the total amount received was $703,652. For FY 2013-14, we have budgeted $700,000. We suspect that number may be a little low, but we don’t have enough information at this time to adjust for the additional dates. The tricky part about predicting the impact of the extra dates is that we get some revenue from the current activity at Hollywood Park (people come to Santa Anita and bet on Hollywood Park races). It is difficult to predict how many additional people will come now that the racing is actually here on those days. Further complicating things is that more people are betting via smartphones and other handheld devices every year. So, while they may be physically at Santa Anita, their bets are increasingly reported as coming from elsewhere, so we don’t get any revenues from that. The table below shows our revenues from the Race Track over time; you can see that it’s generally dropping. Without the additional dates, we would likely be predicting a decrease in revenues this year; with the additional dates, we expect there to be a positive impact, albeit a small one.”
With Santa Anita taking over nearly three months of racing with the closure Hollywood Park in Inglewood, businesses near the racetrack say they are thrilled with the boost in revenue more race days could bring.
Santa Anita’s 2013 Autumn Meet will open on Sept. 27 and will be highlighted by the Breeders’ Cup World Championships on Nov. 1 and 2. For more information regarding the two-day Breeders’ Cup and the 24-day Autumn Meet, please visit www.santaanita.com, or call (626) 574-RACE.
“Further complicating things is that more people are betting via smartphones and other handheld devices every year.” – Arcadia City Manager, Dominic Lazzaretto
