I'll be looking forward to the results of this week's HANA pool party. Initial numbers from the Daily Racing Form's official charts indicate that mutuel wagering was not affected by the Pool Party at all. In fact, several races on the card generated higher handle than the targeted race. Here is how the handle shook out for race 8:
Mutuel Pool: $15,883
Exacta Pool: $8,664
Trifecta Pool: $7,733
Compared to the two races prior (the last races on the card - after the Pool race are for Quarter Horses and tend to generate lower handle so it would be an unfair comparison):
Sixth Race:
Mutuel Pool: $20,784
Exacta Pool: $8,283
Trifecta Pool: $7640
Seventh Race
Mutuel Pool: $20,748
Exacta Pool: $12,566
Trifecta Pool: $11,940
I thought I'd go back to last weekend and check the Race 7 from Sunday. Not exactly apples to apples, but it was the last days of charts I could easily access on-line and it was also the Thoroughbred finale of the day before a couple of Quarter Horse races.
Race 7 - May 17th
Mutuel Pool: $24,358
Exacta Pool: $10,556
Trifecta Pool: $9,337
However you slice it, all these numbers point to the first weekend that the Pool Party failed to move handle. I'll let the much more capable folks at HANA handle the analysis, but there may be a few excuses here:
- It was a holiday weekend. A weekend that traditionally folks head up to the lake, mountains, relatives for the weekend;
- Race came off the turf. It may have been enough for a fair amount of people to pass the race;
- Last Thoroughbred race on the card. Though you will note that I did compare the numbers to last Sunday, that race was a nice state bred allowance race (which will hold Thoroughbred bettors on the track) and the Pool race was simply a lower level claiming race. There may not have been the same retention rate of on-track bettors. The influx of outside source money may have actually been GREATER than last week on the finale race making it a relatively successful Pool Party, but I have no way of verifying that.
- Lack of wide availability. I thought initially that I couldn't bet on Canterbury through my ADW because I was a MN resident. And that still may be the case for me (even though I am traveling this weekend out of stae), but I understand that Canterbury was not available to our Canadian friends and through some other ADWs as well. This greatly dilutes the power of the Pool.
I look forward to HANA's analysis of the event and look forward to the next. United we can make a difference and one week does not a compete study make.
3 comments:
I, like all Canadians were shut out from the race. We make up at least 20% of the HANA members.
I was disappointed by the results, and I have no idea how many American HANA members were shut out as well.
I was also disappointed that HANA received no mention from the announcer at Canterbury.
All the way around, it was very unimpressive.
We will dust ourselves off and move forward though.
I guess taking the race off the turf was the culprit. Was hard enough to handicap as it was, but taking it off the turf made this a complete freak show.
I don't know about others, but I didn't realize it was off until the post parade, mainly because the live stream showed the turf as "yielding", which is simply misleading if you close the course.
Thanks for the comments and especially for stopping by and reading. I didn't see the race, but while Paul Allen (track announcer) may not have mentioned the Pool Party, I know that the official Canterbury Blog has a post on it on the website and the marketing e-mails that went out this past week featured it prominently.
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