Attracting more owners
Knowing that new owners are the lifeblood of horse racing, The Jockey Club is making a push to attract people to the sport, including creating a resource website, giving awards to new owners, and holding a conference for people new to horse racing.
The Jockey Club started a website called OwnerView, which provides information on all aspects of racehorse
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The Jockey Club uses a conference and website (below) to help bring new owners into the sport.
Photo by: The Jockey Club |
ownership. Last year, OwnerView gave its first New Owner of the The Year award to Sol Kumin
(see story).
Additionally, for the past three years, OwnerView has held a conference for new owners or people who are considering racehorse ownership. Last year, radio host and thoroughbred racehorse owner Jim Rome was the keynote speaker.
This year, for the first time, the conference will be held at the Breeders’ Cup host track, which is Santa Anita Park. The conference will have panels featuring jockeys, trainers, owners and veterinarians, among other horse racing insiders.
The Jockey Club has anecdotal evidence that the conference has helped bring new owners into the game, said Gary Falter, vice president of the group.
“We’ve had a number of people who have told me that they weren’t owners or they were considering ownership and now they are,” he said. “There was a woman from Texas who attended the first two conferences, and she emailed me about a month and a half ago and said, ‘I bought my first 2-year-old and I claimed my first horse this year, so now I am officially an owner.’”
Santa Anita bulks up on premium
In the last two years since the Breeders’ Cup has been held at Santa Anita Park, 800 new premium seats have been
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The 100 to 1 Club is among the recent improvements made at Santa Anita Park.
Photo by: Santa Anita Park |
added to the racetrack famous for its views of the San Gabriel mountains.
Santa Anita has spent more than $40 million in renovations in the last three or four years and about $5 million to $10 million since the 2014 Breeders’ Cup, said Nate Newby, Santa Anita Park vice president of marketing.
The new seating includes the Silks Lawn Chalet, which will seat about 500 people and will be right up against the turf course. Tickets are $800, which includes two days of racing, as well as drinks and gourmet food. Food in the Silks Lawn Chalet will be prepared by chef Steve Samson of Sotto restaurant in Los Angeles. Santa Anita also has built a new lounge-like area that fits 120, called the 100 to 1 Club, and added 200 more seats in the area called The View near the finish line.
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The Silks Lawn Chalet will seat about 500 people.
Photo by: Santa Anita Park |
Santa Anita opened in 1934 and is one of the largest racetracks in the world, occupying 320 acres in Arcadia, Calif., a city 15 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. The facility has 20,000 reserved seats, and additional seating around the track and in the infield will accommodate thousands more.
“For Breeders’ Cup over the two days we are expecting 100,000,” Newby said. “Right now we’re up about 30 percent in ticket sales since 2014.”
In addition to the new seating areas, Santa Anita has installed a new turf course for its fall meet, which started Sept. 30. Six of the 13 Breeders’ Cup races, which each carry a purse of $1 million or more, are run on turf.
L.A. Tourism ups the stakes
The Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board is using a full-court press to make this year’s Breeders’ Cup bigger and better in a bid to make Santa Anita Park the permanent home for the annual horse racing event.
The Breeders’ Cup ranks second — only to the Rose Bowl — in bringing visitors to the greater Los Angeles area,
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Statues of horses painted by local artists have been placed throughout Los Angeles to promote the Breeders’ Cup.
Photo by: LA Tourism & Convention Board |
according to L.A. Tourism.
“This was shocking to me — it’s only second to the Rose Bowl,” said Don Skeoch, chief marketing officer of L.A. Tourism. “Breeders’ Cup is the secret no one knows about.”
This year L.A. Tourism is investing money in the Breeders’ Cup to advertise the event to local residents in mailers and on social media. It also commissioned statues of life-sized horses by local artists that have been placed all over Los Angeles.
The Breeders’ Cup will be held at Del Mar Thoroughbred Club in the San Diego area next year and at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., in 2018, but there has been talk of finding a permanent site for the event. Skeoch wants this year’s event at Santa Anita to be a big success so Los Angeles gets a shot at being its long-term host city.
The event is especially attractive because it brings in wealthy, big spenders from all over the world. “We have about 1,500 VIPs coming into Los Angeles,” Skeoch said. “These are really high rollers, and many of them are coming in on their own planes.”
