Betting totals continue to decline in thoroughbred racing

But in the rare situations when a track does offer a consistently attractive betting product, nobody would guess that the U.S. racing economy is ailing. Gulfstream Park and Tampa Bay Downs, both benefitting from the annual influx of northern stables into Florida, have had sensational meetings this winter. Wagering at Gulfstream is up $40 million from the comparable period last winter. Tampa handled nearly $11 million in bets on a single day — the best in its history. Last summer Monmouth Park revamped its racing calendar, distilled its traditional season into a 50-day “elite meeting” with high purses, offered a menu of big, competitive fields and smashed all of its own betting records.

The Monmouth example ought to show the McKinsey/Jockey Club study a formula for solving many of the industry’s ills: Run fewer races with large purses to attract large fields that the public wants to bet. Tracks should shorten their season and pare their schedules to four or three days per week if necessary. The weakest tracks should discontinue live racing.

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Finding this answer is easy. Implementing it may be impossible.

Whenever tracks try to cut back their schedules, they face stiff opposition from horsemen’s organizations, who typically fight for as many racing dates as possible and have no objections to the small fields that the public dislikes. Moreover, tracks with slot-machine revenue to subsidize a weak racing product have no economic spur to reduce their racing dates.

Somehow the sport has to find a way to improve its betting product, because a time bomb is ticking. The U.S. is struggling this year with a horse shortage because only about 32,000 foals were born in 2008 — the current crop of 3-year-olds. In 2011, the Jockey Club estimates the size of the foal crop at 24,900, so there will be no escape from the horse-population crisis in the next several years. It seems almost inevitable that fields will get smaller and horseplayers will wager even less. In its search for solutions to racing’s ills, McKinsey & Co. has a daunting task ahead.