Five things: Churchill Downs goes cha-ching; Texas A&M gets the penalty box
Five thing of interest — at least to me anyway — on the federal holiday for the Fourth of July, one day before the Fourth of July.
1. CHURCHILL DOWNS CASHES IN ON ITS SPRING MEET
No fans? No problem. With no other sport to bet on, the betting public loaded up on Churchill Downs’ 27-date Spring Meet, wagering $240.5 million, a 53.3 percent increase over the 32 days of racing following the 2019 Kentucky Derby. Churchill also reports its average daily handle was up 81.7 percent from $4.9 million last year to $8.9 million this year.
Not having spectators in the seats did present one problem, of course. No fans meant no ticket sales, no concession sales, no private box sales and no merchandise sales. So it wasn’t all one big win for CDI.
Still, my guess is the track had to be thrilled at the response under these coronavirus conditions. And no doubt the fact that Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2 aired each day of racing helped the financial cause, as well.
Other racing news:
▪ Keeneland announced Thursday that president and CEO Bill Thomason will retire at the end of the year. He will be replaced by Keeneland’s general counsel, Shannon Bishop Arvin, the first female to hold the position.
▪ And Ellis Park kicked off its summer meet with limited attendance.
2. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY AND PROBATION DAY TEXAS A&M!
Talk about your stealth NCAA investigations. There was little to no talk about the fact that the infractions division in Indianapolis was looking into alleged activity rules violations by the Texas A&M football program before — boom — the Aggies were hit with a one-year probation and Coach Jimbo Fisher a six-month show-cause penalty on Thursday, which just happened to be the eight-year anniversary of Texas A&M and Missouri joining the SEC.
If you remember, Fisher was UK Coach Mark Stoops’ boss when the two worked together at Florida State — Fisher as head coach and Stoops as defensive coordinator. Now in College Station, Fisher will not be allowed to recruit until 2021. Meanwhile, his staff will be working under a bevy recruiting restrictions levied by the NCAA. Fisher is entering the third year of a 10-year, $75 million contract.
3. YOUR DAILY COVID-19 FOOTBALL FREAKOUT
Just as COVID-19 cases are heating back up, so is the debate over whether to push the college football season from the fall of 2020 to the spring of 2021. Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel raised that possibility this week. Tim Sullivan of the Courier-Journal echoed it on Thursday. And Stewart Mandel of The Athletic says college football’s powers should be thinking about a Plan B.
Our own Mark Story begs to differ, however. Mark thinks there’s just a 30 percent chance that college football starts on time, but he sees some significant problems with making it a spring sport for 2021. Among them is the chance junior and senior stars might ditch college ball early, especially considering the NFL says it has no interest in delaying its 2021 draft date.
▪ Three EKU athletes and three staffers have been isolating after testing positive for COVID-19.
4. THE TV NETWORKS ARE ALSO FREAKING OUT
So says Ben Strauss of the Washington Post, who reports that for the TV networks there is one unthinkable scenario: Losing the 2020 NFL season.
According to Strauss, Fox pays more than $1.5 billion each year to televise NFL games on Sunday afternoons and Thursday night. ESPN pays about $2 billion for “Monday Night Football” — and still can’t come up with a watchable MNF broadcast team. CBS plays about $1 billion for its Sunday afternoon games and NBC forks over $950 million for “Sunday Night Football.” Combined, those networks brought in a combined $6 billion in advertising revenue.
Writes Strauss:
In the longer term, said David Hill, a former president of Fox Sports, missing an NFL season hurts the broadcast networks in their battle for relevance against streaming services such as Netflix. Their main advantage in that struggle, Hill said, remains the NFL, and sports continue to be one of the key drivers for consumers paying for cable packages. According to MoffettNathanson, traditional paid TV subscriptions fell by 1.8 million in the first quarter of this year as the pandemic hit and live sports were mostly canceled. It was the highest-ever rate of cord-cutting in a single quarter.”
5. MERCY ROSE ISBELL IS AWESOME AT YODELING
We present Jason Isbell’s daughter.
This story was originally published July 3, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
