Status Quo for 2015-16 Florida Racing Dates

Blood-Horse

For the first time in five years there will be no major changes in Florida’s Thoroughbred racing calendar.

In filings made to the Florida Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering, Gulfstream Park has selected racing dates for the July 1, 2015-June 30, 2016 fiscal year that are almost identical to its 2014-15 schedule. The annual deadline for choosing race dates was Feb. 28.

Tampa Bay Downs also will have a schedule almost the same as this season. Tampa Bay will have racing July 1, 2015, and June 30, 2016, along with its traditional meet from late November to early May.

Hialeah Park plans to have its seventh consecutive season of Quarter Horse-only racing, from Dec. 26, 2015-Feb. 29, 2016. The track has not had Thoroughbred racing since 2001.

Hialeah ended its 2014-15 meet March 3 and set a record for its Quarter Horse meets with $347,826 in average daily all-sources pari-mutuel handle.

In 2015-16, Gulfstream will again conduct racing year-round for a total of 230 racing days at two tracks. Gulfstream will race 190 days over 10 months in Hallandale Beach from July 1-Oct. 3 in 2015 and from Dec. 5, 2015-June 30, 2016.

Gulfstream will race Wednesdays through Sundays from December through April and Thursdays through Sundays during most of the other months.

Under a lease agreement, Gulfstream, like it did in 2014, will have 40 days of racing in October and November at neighbor Calder Casino & Race Course in Miami Gardens from Oct. 7-Nov. 28, mostly on a Wednesday through Sunday schedule. It is likely that for the second straight year Gulfstream will call that meet Gulfstream Park West.

“It’s about what we expected, and we think it is fine,” Phil Combest, president of the Florida Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, said of having October and November as the months at Calder. “This works better for them than having one month in the summer and one in the fall. They had some good (handle) at Calder, and we understand why they will do it again.”

Gulfstream’s handle numbers have been strong since last July, when it ended a 12-month period of head-to-head weekend racing with Calder.

Average daily all-sources handle was about $3.5 million for Gulfstream’s summer meet from July 1-Oct. 4. Then it took several weeks to build name recognition for Gulfstream Park West, though for the final five days, average daily all-sources handle was about $4 million.

Gulfstream officials have declined recent requests for comments on handle and apparently are waiting to release statements following the end of the track’s Championship Meet March 29. However, a Blood-Horse review of Equibase charts indicates Gulfstream has a very good chance of breaking its record of an average of $8.6 million in all-sources handle it set in 2012-13 even though it raced head-to-head with Calder.

This year, for the nine racing days between Feb. 19 and March 1, Gulfstream had average daily all-sources handle of $9.5 million even though Gulfstream had to call off its Feb. 28 card after five races because of heavy rain and had just $3,772,946 in total wagering that day. In contrast, Gulfstream had $20,583,598 in all-sources handle for its Feb. 21 card that featured the Besilu Stables Fountain of Youth Stakes (gr. II).

Since 2001-02, Florida pari-mutuel operators have picked their own racing dates; approvals from the Florida DPMW usually are automatic. Gulfstream and Calder in conjunction submitted their requests for racing dates for 2015-16.

They used four racing licenses: Gulfstream holds the Gulfstream and Gulfstream Park Thoroughbred After Racing Program (GPTARP) licenses, while Calder holds the Calder and Tropical licenses.

For Calder’s parent company Churchill Downs Inc. to keep its slot-machine casino at Calder there must be at least 40 racing days each year at that track under one of its racing licenses. In 2015 that will be the Calder license. The tracks are keeping the Tropical license active by using it for 40 of the racing days at Gulfstream.

Gulfstream will have five days of racing under its GPTARP license from July 3-7. It uses that not-for-profit license at least one day each year to help assure the license will retain its active status.

Most of Gulfstream’s property is located in Broward County. The south end of the property is in Aventura in Miami-Dade County. Gulfstream lists the GPTARP address as Aventura, though the Florida DPMW lists it as Hallandale Beach. If deemed to be in Aventura, GPTARP would be eligible for Miami-Dade ventures such as developing casinos on or off the Gulfstream site.

A racing license that is not used two consecutive years is subject to revocation by the Florida DPMW. That happened to Hialeah Park when, facing financial problems, it did not have racing in 2002 and 2003. The Florida DPMW revoked Hialeah’s license, and it has not been able to obtain a new Thoroughbred license.

Tampa Bay will have 89 race days from Nov. 28, 2015-May 8, 2016. It is racing on the first and last days of the 2015-16 fiscal year to retain its eligibility to be a year-round host track for interstate simulcasts.