On-track attendance at racetracks is nothing like it was back in racing’s heyday. Many of racing’s top tracks are very large, and if it isn’t one of the track’s major days, many of those facilities appear to be virtually empty. The vision of a particular track official is turning that problem into a positive.
As a lead-in to Breeders’ Cup weekend, Darren Heitner, in a piece for Forbes, spoke with Santa Anita Park Chairman Keith Brackpool.
Brackpool ‘took over’ Santa Anita four years ago when he purchased an equity stake in the track’s owner, the Stronach Group, and he quickly worked to rectify one of the problems with racing’s grand showplaces. Instead of trying to pack Santa Anita via traditional methods, he has taken a different approach, and that approach appears to be paying off for the Arcadia, California plant.
When Brackpool gained his position at Santa Anita, he decided to roll out a five to ten-year-old plan to make the track ‘millenial-friendly.’ Brackpool’s plan is also focusing on achieving maximum revenue instead of merely looking for maximum attendance.
With a decent amount of space to work with, Brackpool has looked to help generate maximum revenues by building “premium spaces.”
“Horse racing was never a sport where corporations entertain, so we built 12 glorious suites. Now you can take customers and friends to a suite and entertain them,” Brackpool told Heitner. “Now we serve the level of food expected to be served, with gourmet chefs. There are rooms for high rollers. We rebuilt an Art Deco room called The Chandelier Room. People will pay $65-70 just to get in. We also had to think how to get people out to the stadium, so we made a deal with Uber where if you go to Santa Anita, they give a 50 per cent discount off of the ride.”
Even though the suites are taking up some of the track’s space, Brackpool has stated that the suites have helped increase attendance at the track over the past three years. Those increases came after year-after-year declines.
(With files from Forbes)