Penn National Race Course in Grantville, Pa., opens its year-long meet today with a curtailed racing schedule and two new extended breaks scheduled for the spring and fall, in a plan designed to boost purses in a competitive market. The plan by Penn National to drop 20 live racing days from its 135-day schedule last year and boost average purses by 25 percent across-the-board underlines the shifts some racetracks are making in the face of declining foal crops, stagnant handle, and ever-increasing competition from casinos and sports betting. Under the plan, Penn National will continue to hold racing on a Wednesday-through-Friday night schedule but will cease racing for five weeks in late March and seven weeks in September and October. Todd Mostoller, the longtime executive director of the Pennsylvania Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, said that horsemen agreed to the plan in order to stay competitive with purses at nearby racetracks, to keep horses from shipping out from the track in pursuit of richer opportunities in nearby Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey – and vice versa. Purses for maiden special weight races will climb from $27,000 this year to $34,000 this year. :: Bet the races with a $200 First Deposit Match + FREE All Access PPs! Join DRF Bets. “We’re trying to improve the situation for owners,” Mostoller said. “We have to stay competitive in the market because you can’t have all these horses shipping out to get bigger purses down the road. At $27,000, we weren’t competitive.” Chris McErlean, the vice president of racing for Penn Entertainment, the owner of Penn National and several other tracks across the U.S., said that the idea for the breaks arose out of discussions both internally and with the track’s horsemen.  “We are trying to find a balance for a nearly year-round racing schedule with the need for a year-round facility for stabling and training,” McErlean said. “It’s pretty difficult. We understand where the horsemen are, but it’s difficult for us when we have all these fixed costs and staffing issues.” Purses at Penn National, like all tracks in the state and most in the surrounding region, are heavily subsidized by gambling revenues at casinos attached to the tracks. Over the past ten years, Pennsylvania’s legislature has repeatedly expanded the number of licenses for casinos in the state, and the result has been a “steady cannibalization” at the racetrack-casinos that were initially the sole licensees, Mostoller said. In 2012, Mostoller said, the total subsidies flowing from Penn National’s casino to its horsemen and state breeders was $45 million. That total had fallen to approximately $30 million last year. As a result, Mostoller said that horsemen and the track were forced into re-thinking the racing schedule this year. “It’s not a matter of what we thought was best,” Mostoller said. “It’s what we could afford.” Concurrent with a steady decline in the foal crop, the number of races held at U.S. tracks has dropped 23.1 percent over the past ten years, according to figures from Equibase. While that drop has led to far fewer racing opportunities, the foal crop decline has reduced the number of horses arriving at racetracks at roughly the same rate. As a result, nationally, the average field size has remained steady, average purses at U.S. tracks have risen to records, and the average handle per race has risen despite static handle figures over the same time period. In Pennsylvania itself, the number of races held during the year has dropped from 4,211 in 2014 to 2,999 last year, an overall decline of 28.8 percent, according to records from The Jockey Club. While total purses have fallen 18.4 percent, from $107.3 million in 2014 to $87.6 million, the average purse at the state’s racetracks has increased 14.6 percent, to $29,210. :: Bet with the Best! Get FREE All-Access PPs and Weekly Cashback when you wager on DRF Bets. Over the same time frame, the average field size at Pennsylvania racetracks has dropped a full horse, from 8.2 horses per race to 7.1. Racing officials across the country attempt to maintain a field size of at least 8.0 horses, but despite those efforts, the national field-size figure hasn’t topped that number since 2011. It has only recently begun creeping up. McErlean said that total handle at Penn National remained steady last year after the track decided to card only seven races a day, rather than eight. As a result, the average handle per-race jumped 12 percent. In addition, the track’s live-racing hiatuses this year are scheduled at the times when Penn typically has its weakest field sizes, McErlean said.   “The wagering side has stabilized, we hope, and we’re seeing that every pool is now bigger,” McErlean said. “Our weakest months have been March and that September-October period, so hopefully we’re keeping the strongest part of the schedule on our side.”  While Penn National said in a release that the spring and fall breaks this year would give trainers an opportunity to rest their horses, it’s also possible that many horsemen use that time to ship their race-ready horses to nearby tracks. That would lead to increased field sizes at regional tracks, not a bad thing for the overall industry. On the breeding side, despite a robust incentive program, the number of mares bred in Pennsylvania dropped from 907 in 2014 to just 448 in 2022. The most dramatic drops occurred in the past several years, a reduction that Mostoller contended was due to public support for a plan by former Gov. Tom Wolf to redirect racing’s gambling subsidies to education and property tax-relief. “The plan had no realistic shot of passing the Senate or House,” Mostoller said. “But when you read these headlines, if you are a breeder, why are you going to take that chance when the money might not be there down the road, when you’ve got three years before that foal even gets to the track?” Pennsylvania’s new governor, Josh Shapiro, has not indicated any support for a plan to reduce the subsidies, despite consistent grumbling from some groups about the amount of money pouring into the state’s racing industry, which currently has three Thoroughbred tracks and three Standardbred tracks. “This isn’t a problem that’s going away, but at least now we probably have some stability,” Mostoller said. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? 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