Canterbury cutting takeout to lowest in US
 

Good news!

http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-raci...ross-the-board

While the state government talks only of raising all sorts of taxes and fees, it's nice to see Canterbury thinking of it's customer base. Good for the 'hometown' track!

i'm definitely going to pay more attention to them this summer. It's a nice track, i'm glad they're rattling cages to get people to take notice.

Plus, its Grunder's summer home :{>:

-bt-

I love the place. The only knock against was a real problem with horse population last meet. I hope that improves this year. Take out is meaningless when you are running 5-6 horse fields (though the turf races seem to fill).

Great interview with Randy Sampson on ATR today. Its time to see if Canterbury can show the country that reduced takeout will significantly increase handle.

Canterbury has raised the bet. Are players gonna fold, call or raise?


Its time for players to put there money where there mouth is.

Your right. This is a test.

Field size averaged 7.98 horses in 2015.

Mark..

Thanks for listening. Was pleased to get Sampson in advance of their season and herald their widespread initiatives promoting their product at all levels. Hope they have strong results.

One sidebar that we didn't get to Thursday was this enhancement to odds presentation:

10-Second Odds Updates: In conjunction with United Tote, Canterbury Park will offer win odds that update every 10-seconds when there is less than 10 Minutes to Post. This change will provide Canterbury Park and its customers the most real-time win odds in North American horse racing. We believe that this advancement in the tote system will greatly benefit customers as they will constantly have access to the most current win odds.

Post script from last night.............attendance on track of 7,439 bet $243,802 but the total with simulcast money was $840,999............beautiful evening and the crowd turned out. Most seemed more interested in food and beverages but regardless the folks at Cby are pretty happy with the start and it was fun hearing the "roar of the crowd"..........should be a pretty fun meet all summer.

That was a 33% increase over opening night last year.

Gary Palmisano of CD offered this rough cut of the numbers..

2015: $632k (20.4% blended T/O) = 129k revenue
2016- $845k (16.5% blended T/O) = 139k revenue

Handle +30% = Revenue +$10k

They're all like..."Eureka!"

And we be like..."Told you so!"

I'll definitely be playing there some. I love the idea of low takeout.

I've never even look at Canterbury before but I'm going to play for sure just to do my part and they are rewarded for helping the players out.

They announced on their website that Saturday's total handle was up 20% over last year's Preakness day handle.

That's somewhat surprising with all the afternoon competition.

I expect the night time cards will get the bigger boost.

I'm not as high on reduced takeout as the magic bullet as others but the opposite was absolutely true with CD's inane decision to raise takeout "because they could" after adding the September meet. Handle tanked.

I love their turf racing. I visited the track a couple of years ago and was very impressed. After the first couple of weeks, when they switch to 4 days a week, you usually get 3 turf races a day, with 8 or more horses. SoCal should be so lucky.

Phil..

Please don't perpetuate myths, or lies, here. CD raised takeout in an attempt to maintain their purse structure so as not to lose horses to other jurisdictions. While the decision was simplistic and myopic, it wasn't done just 'because they could'.

It's unbalanced that there is never an acknowledgement in discussions on this topic that they are surrounded by casino-fueled states (IN, OH, PA, WV) and are without the luxury of alternate revenues like KY Downs/Ellis (Instant Racing funding) or Keeneland (Sales Company funding).

And in terms of dollars and cents, their pricing remained rather fair. Their rates on WPS were industry low-ish (16%) and were raised to a middling 17.5%. Their multi horse and and multi rate rake was industry low-ish (19%) and went to a rather typical 22%, lower than NY and CA on most multis.

Definitely.. Their turf race fields have averaged 9 the last few summers.

Many people probably don't know about the unusual OTB/ADW rules in Minnesota. Well actually there is no OTB at all because a state amendment vote failed many years back. Thus, MN players are allowed to have ADW accounts but are blocked from betting Canterbury's signal.

So for the most part their best potential customers (MN bettors) must be on track to bet their races. This has improved slightly as you can now bet at Running Aces, the harness track in the northern suburbs.