The shift to afternoon racing in 2020 proved a beneficial one for Hanover Raceway — so much so they will maintain their daytime schedule on summer Saturdays in 2021, albeit with a couple changes.
Despite heavy restrictions in on-track attendance last season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hanover Raceway achieved their highest all-sources handle marks in three decades thanks to their placement in the simulcast market. This season, general manager Steve Fitzsimmons has opted to bump post time even earlier in an effort to afford Hanover even better placement.
"We've adjusted our post time this year from 2 o'clock last season — which worked very well for us — just back a half an hour to 1:30," Fitzsimmons said in a recent interview with Fred Wallace of Bayshore Broadcasting. "We adjusted it time-wise because we wanted to tinker with where our races fall during the afternoon relative to other racetracks, and we feel this might be just a little more beneficial for wagering purposes to land in this spot as opposed to the 2 o'clock. ... There were times where we went off at post time at the same time as other racetracks; that probably impacted our wagering. So, we just thought this would position us just a little bit better."
In a year that was an exercise in adaptation in many ways, Hanover's foresight to abandon their traditional Saturday night slot in favour of daytime racing helped the small Ontario track shine amid otherwise bleak circumstances: they achieved an average per-card handle of $50,787 — an 88 per cent increase over their figures from 2019. Looking ahead to 2021, Fitzsimmons is hopeful that Hanover can maintain their upward trajectory.
"We're certainly very happy given the world and everything that went on, and the limitations that we had and even our expectations we had that were fairly modest," he continued. "We exceeded any expectations that anyone could have had for us, so we're looking to build off of that and we think doing a couple of things that will help us on the wagering front will do that ... We're working with some of the wagering people [at HPI] and having some conversations about adding some additional multi-leg wagering, and we're hopeful that will lead to some more announcements about some other wagering opportunities that we'll have."
Fitzsimmons did note that the one exception to the 1:30 p.m. post time is for the 2021 Dream Of Glory card on July 31, with hopes that the track will be able to conduct its traditional fireworks night after the races. Should such an evening not be possible due to health guidelines, that date would have its card shifted to the afternoon.