This little piggy didn't go to market

Hollywood Park released its handle and attendance figures for the recently concluded spring-summer meet, and business was not booming at the Southern California wagering emporium.

Average attendance declined 10.4% while average daily handle was down 10.3%. The track blamed "economic times that continue to be difficult," and while that certainly may have been a factor, I think the biggest reason the meet tanked is because the track completely gutted its marketing budget.

Hollywood took from Peter (the marketing budget) to pay Paul (horsemen). That is, the track used money it otherwise would have spent marketing its product to pay purses.

The racing industry could really experience the hole in Hollywood's marketing program when only about 12,000 people showed up to watch undefeated two-time champion Zenyatta win the Vanity Handicap for the third time. It was her 17th consecutive win with no losses surpassing streaks compiled by Cigar and Citation among others and equaling an international mark set by Silent Witness.

Is there a track anywhere else in the U.S. that would have gotten less than 12,000 for an appearance by Zenyatta in a marquee race? I doubt it.

It's not Zenyatta's fault Hollywood couldn't market her appearance, but the low attendance certainly makes Laura Hillenbrand's recent paean to the champion a bit hyperbolic with such claims as "There's a rapture gathering around this horse." Maybe Zenyatta goes out at night eating cars, but if 12,000 people counts as a rapture than this industry has set the bar way, way too low.

Seeing 4,000 people at the track in big markets on a random Saturday or only 500 people at the track on a Tuesday afternoon doesn't bother me. But when people aren't turning out for a marquee attraction then that's a problem. The horsemen and bettors will support the daily product, but we need to give everyone else a reason to come to the track every so often.

So what did Hollywood get for its investment in overnight purses? Canceled race dates and a bunch of six-horse fields of uncompetitive racing is what.

To be fair, Hollywood's signal is still popular. Yes, handle was down, but Hollywood was still routinely the second most wagered on product in simulblast (sic) land throughout its meet .So the horseplayers who have remained in the game are still playing the product, but they would have continued to play it even if average daily purses were a few thousand dollars less. I just can't imagine the meet being any worse than canceled dates and short fields even if a little less was offered for $10,000 claimers.

So where are the regulators in this? The California Horse Racing Board members have done well to engage in due diligence regarding MI Developments' acquisition of Santa Anita Park and Golden Gate Fields but seemed to have rubber stamped Hollywood's purse agreement that resulted in no funds to market its product.

Hollywood's approach to marketing reminds me of an analogy songwriter Craig Finn made comparing the mortgage crisis to a teenage party:

It just seems like logic went out the window. You know what it’s like? Imagine you’re sixteen and you’re drunk as hell and you’re having a party at your parents’ house, and then your parents call and they say, “We’re coming home early, we’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” You could try to clean up, or you could just finish the rest of the tequila. Because what the hell, you’re screwed anyway, right? It looks to me like that’s what happened in this mortgage crisis. And these are people who graduated from Ivy League institutions. They are not dumb people. But they drank that bottle of tequila like they were teenagers about to get busted. It was just like, “[Eff] it, I’m taking a few more million and then I’m getting out of here!”

To wit, Hollywood Park and its horsemen knew the meet wouldn't be that great so rather than try to improve racing's standing at all by investing in its potential growth, they just took all the money for themselves.