It’s unheard of in the world of small racetracks.
Starting tonight, Assiniboia Downs, the modest track on the Canadian prairies, is offering a guarantee of $50,000 on its pick-4 pool every night of live racing ‒ Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Only the big boys have made guarantees like that. But Assiniboia Downs has actually had bigger pick-4 pools than Woodbine. This past Saturday, the pick-4 pool on races 7 to 10 at Woodbine was $87,510. Assiniboia Downs’ pools last Monday and Wednesday were: $104,700 and $93,960 respectively.
And it’s no contest when comparing ASD’s pick-4 pools with Canada’s other major Thoroughbred tracks: Fort Erie’s biggest pick-4 pool this past week was on Tuesday with $16,096; Hastings Racecourse saw its biggest pool of $16,010 last Sunday and Century Mile reached $10,470 on Friday.
You’d think ASD management would be giddy with joy, but CEO Darren Dunn is measured in his comments. “I’m not shocked,” he said in a telephone interview. “Years ago, we started planning ways in which we could reach a million-dollar handle,” he said.
And that goal has been reached. Last Monday’s handle on its typical seven-race card was $1.25 million, Tuesday’s was $1.15 million and Wednesday’s was $1.17 million. The pick-4’s popularity, Dunn said, likely stems from its consistent placement on the seven-race card (races 4 to 7), the larger fields in those races and the low take-out of 15.95 per cent.
Prior to COVID-19, ASD raced Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights and wagering of $350,000 was an exceptional day. In fact, three years ago Friday, the total wagering was $141,572, Saturday was $198,579 and Wednesday was $308,733. The pick-4 pools ranged from $8,700 to $12,000.
When COVID struck the following year and most tracks were closed for spring racing, ASD did what they had been thinking of doing for some time: they re-scheduled racing for the leanest racing times on the racing calendar: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night and they were the first Canadian track (and one of the few tracks in the world) to offer racing again ‒ which began with no fans on May 25, 2020.
Being first in Canada was huge. Suddenly, players from as far afield as Germany, Brazil, Mexico and England were learning how to pronounce Assiniboia (not Assiniboine) Downs. New fans were born as players obviously liked what they saw ‒ which included a new online “ASD Live” handicapping show ‒ and became used to betting a new track. And it stuck.
Outside of Woodbine which has multi-million-dollar handles, Fort Erie’s daily handle for six races Mondays and Tuesdays is just over $600,000, seven-race cards at Hastings on Saturdays and Sundays produce about $450,000 which is similar to Century Mile which runs nine races Fridays and Saturdays.
Million-dollar handles doesn’t mean a track is swimming in dough, though. Most of each track’s wagering comes from racing partners who broadcast each track’s signal and pay the track about three per cent of the wagers. So $1 million in partner wagering nets the track with the originating signal about $30,000.
Local wagering, where the track receives the full take-out from each wager, is miniscule. Only two tracks publish those figures on Equibase: at Fort Erie, local wagering is about $30,000 per six-race card and at Century Mile it’s about $36,000 for a nine-race card. Which means 90 per cent or more of a track’s total handle these days comes from partner wagering worth about 3 per cent.
“High volume, low margins,” Dunn continually reminds the public. Still, getting “in the neighbourhood” of 3 per cent is still better than going back to the old days of Wednesday-Friday-Saturday wagering and holiday afternoon wagering, he says. The track’s certified Angus prime rib buffets still pack in the crowds. And, to families who miss pony rides and the petting zoo for kids on holidays, Dunn said the track is looking at strategies to add that to next year’s schedule.
With the help of a former track bartender, Cory O’Grodnik, who seems to have a personal pipeline to entrepreneurs, crafts people and food truck operators, the track is regularly crowded with visitors to night markets, food truck wars and the like. No racing was held on Canada Day July 1 since it was a Friday, but about 10,000 people still paid $10 each to take in a program of live music, beer garden, food trucks and artisans which culminated in a fireworks display.
Despite being surrounded in positivity, Dunn remains cautious. “It’s not how we start out the season, it’s how we finish.”
The only regret has to be that Harvey Warner, the president of the Manitoba Jockey Club which took over Assiniboia Downs as a not-for-profit business in 1993, isn’t around to celebrate this milestone. He passed away in April at 74.
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