Thursday Thoughts with Jason Beem Nov. 7, 2024

A good Thursday morning to you all! Been a busy week in racing and out and I’m looking forward to some good weekend racing coming up. Obviously all the stars from Breeders’ Cup won’t be on track any time soon, but these next few weeks are actually some of my favorite ones of the year. I believe a lot of people think of the time after Breeders’ Cup up until the new year are kind of the quiet season for racing. And from a big name perspective I suppose that’s correct. But some of my favorite racing cards are coming up from Aqueduct and Woodbine not only this weekend, but the next several weeks. 

Aqueduct’s fall turf racing is always so good. I don’t know what it is, but I always seem to enjoy it and have good opinions there. Woodbine always seems to end their meet very strong with large field sizes. Many of the horses that race there don’t go south for the winter and connections want to get a race or two or three in during these last few weeks of the season, so it seems like the entry box just stays quite full. The stakes this weekend I believe have 13, 14, and 12 for pre-scratch fields up there. Awesome!

Feels like now that we’re a few more days removed from the Breeders' Cup, people are mostly moving on. One of the good things about racing is it never really stops. World Series ends and there’s no baseball for four months. Super Bowl clock winds down and there isn’t another NFL snap for about seven months. But as soon as the last horse crossed the wire in the Dirt Mile (G1), there were races going off five minutes later in Louisiana, West Virginia, and all sorts of other locales.  It’s one of the cool things, but I also think it's one of the challenging parts of our game. I mean it’s great to have a supply of races going everyday, but I wonder if it does lead to burn out or overexposure for a lot of people. Racing is an emotionally and sometimes financially taxing endeavor for its participants and customers. Would we be served by having a true off-season in the sport? 

Growing up we had off-seasons in racing as fans and players because simulcasting wasn’t really all that prevalent. They’d start racing at Longacres in April and run through September and that was our racing season. The horsemen would move onto the smaller tracks like Yakima Meadows or Playfair or Portland Meadows, but we players would just wait until April came back around. 

I do think breaks lead to a build up in demand and excitement for a product. Tracks that race year-round or that have very long meets tend to get a little stale in all areas, especially attendance. Our best attended live race meets are almost all in spots where the season is maybe a month or two. Now I understand that times have changed and the need to be at the track no longer exists, as we can pretty much bet from anywhere, but I do think there is something to be said for having a good live crowd at the races and not a mostly empty grandstand. 

I’m not anticipating racing as a whole will move to an on-season/off-season model like most other professional sports do for a number of reasons. But I do wonder if field size, excitement about the sport, and things like that would improve with a more seasonal type schedule. Just kind of thinking out loud as this column is meant to do. 

Everyone have a great week!