After three straight meets of declines, Keeneland looks for key indicators to rebound

Jeff Platt examines Keeneland through the eyes of racing’s most crucial customer. And the president of the Horseplayers Association of North America is as stunned as anyone by what’s happening at the Lexington racetrack.

From a handicapping standpoint, Keeneland is consistently rated at or near the top by horseplayers for its quality fields and bettor-friendly takeout rates. Add to that the overall fan experience, and it would seem a day on Keeneland’s grounds would be a slam-dunk sale to casual and hard-core fans alike.

However, since Keeneland removed its synthetic Polytrack surface and switched back to dirt for the 2014 Fall Meet, across-the-board declines in handle and attendance have been recorded at each of the track’s three meets. While Keeneland is not the only track to suffer a downturn, it is a trend that doesn’t sit lightly with an operation that has made the highest level of racing its mantra.

“I don’t think anyone saw it coming. I certainly didn’t see it coming, and talking to other players, they didn’t either,” Platt said. “In fact, I thought when their surface went back to dirt, their handle would go up. As far as an on-track experience and a surrounding area, I go for a week there and it’s total immersion into the horse world. It’s just an overall beautiful experience.”

With the 2016 Spring Meet starting Friday, Keeneland finds itself in the position of trying to right a ship that has gone — relatively speaking — slightly off course the last year and a half. The opening weekend features ample fields each of the first three days, and Saturday in particular is loaded, with the Grade I, $1 million Toyota Blue Grass Stakes — a Kentucky Derby prep race — and the Grade I Central Bank Ashland and Grade I Madison.

One of the reasons cited by Keeneland when it switched back to dirt after installing Polytrack in 2006 was a desire to lure elite outfits, like that of seven-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Todd Pletcher, back to its meets on a regular basis.

Though the surface change succeeded in getting some higher profile names back in the fold, what Keeneland lost was its spot in the market where horses with synthetic/turf form could race in the spring and fall. And with the horse population shrinking because of decreases in the foal crop, Keeneland’s field size has taken a hit as it competes with tracks in New York, California and Florida, among others.

The 2015 Fall Meet, which led into Keeneland hosting the Breeders’ Cup for the first time, averaged 8.52 starters per race, up slightly from the previous year’s 8.42 but down 13.5 percent compared with the average field of 9.85 2013. The 2015 Spring Meet had an average field size of 8.07, down from an average of 9.09 starters per race in spring 2014.

“When you lose a full horse per field, your handle is going to drop; there is just no two ways about it,” Platt said. “That means they had a way of attracting bigger fields, and that went away when they changed surfaces.

“I think there was this unique, niche market space where horses who were bred for stamina could race during those times of the year, and when they went back to dirt I don’t think they thought about that ahead of time. I don’t know if they did or they didn’t, but I suspect they may have miscalculated a little bit.”

Rogers Beasley, vice president of racing for Keeneland, said track officials braced for the decline in field size in exchange for getting some of the best of the best. Exhibit A to that point is the five-horse field for Saturday’s Ashland Stakes, featuring three of the best 3-year-old fillies in the country in unbeaten Cathryn Sophia, Grade I winner Rachel’s Valentina and graded stakes winner Carina Mia.

“For American horses, they run on dirt, and every track has run into that problem of field size,” Beasley said. “Everyone kind of runs between 8.2, 8.4 to 8.8, and when we had the synthetic track, we were right at about 10. So that was something we knew was going to happen. Hopefully we are getting better horses to run here, and we think we are, and that’s just part of it. It’s tough to deal with. We’re a boutique meet, and with the purse money we’re given we hope we will continue to move our field size up, but it’s not easy.”

Keeneland’s status as a boutique meet is its calling card, but that also adds to its current challenge.

Santa Anita Park, Aqueduct, Gulfstream, Oaklawn and Fair Grounds have lmeets that run winter into spring, meaning horsemen can set up shop there from the beginning of the year and map out a series of races on those respective circuits.

The lack of such a lead-in has an effect, in particular, on luring horses for the Blue Grass Stakes because many of the connections of top Kentucky Derby contenders stick to their base rather than ship for their final major prep. It also can be argued that, since Keeneland went back to dirt, bettors still are getting comfortable figuring out how the surface is going to play as horses converge from other regions.

“If you’re racing every day for like six months, you know what the horses are doing against the other horses,” Beasley said. “Another thing we also do is we run a lot more maiden/allowance races than any other racetrack does as a percentage of our basic card every day. If we wanted to run seven to eight claimers a day, I’d probably average nine horses a race … . But that’s not our mission. We know we have to live with smaller fields from that viewpoint.”

The decline in attendance is more difficult to explain. Though inclement weather has affected recent meets — including last year’s Spring Meet when the final four races on opening day were canceled — the 2015 Fall Meet had unusually warm temperatures, yet total attendance and average daily attendance each declined 4.32 percent even with the Breeders’ Cup hype and marketing push.

“I go back to the fall and I look at (University of Kentucky) football and the games that were here and … I’m not really” surprised at the decline, said Bill Thomason, president and CEO of Keeneland. “The other parts, I think, is we had to do some things where we inconvenienced a lot of fans with temporary facilities, some of the traffic things we had to do, some of the structures we put up around the grounds. As great as that all was in being able to provide those facilities, we still put some hurdles in front of people last year that we don’t have to have anymore. Hopefully we’ll have a lot more stability this year than we’ve had in the past.”

To that end, Keeneland is trying some new tactics to get patrons packing the place. This spring, free public parking will be available on a first-come, first-served basis in Rows 10-20 and Rows 26-34 near the grandstand, with free parking also available in The Meadow and on The Hill, both of which are adjacent to the Keeneland Entertainment Center.

If the first three days are any indication, the on-track product will be about as good as fans could ask. Of the 30 races carded through Sunday, 18 drew fields of 12 or more.

“It (the numbers) will come back as the horsemen readjust to it, and it’s still a great place to go,” Platt said. “I plan on going there and I plan on betting. I can’t wait for their meet to start.”

This story was originally published April 7, 2016 at 5:27 PM with the headline "After three straight meets of declines, Keeneland looks for key indicators to rebound."