By Bradford Cummings
As owners, breeders, industry employees and media or racing fans, we spend the vast majority of our time concentrating on the headline tracks and top names in the sport. We talk about Triple Crown season, the opening of Saratoga, Del Mar, Oak Tree, or Keeneland and the Breeders’ Cup, filling in the blanks with graded stakes races at top venues across the country. We fret about handle dropping from $15 billion to $12 billion over a handful of years and wring our hands over the percentages that go to tracks from OTBs across the country and ADWs sprouting up on the web.
 
But there are race places in this country without these worries. Tracks where small is king, where concessions make up as much bottom line revenue as handle and where the entire staff is made up of a few dedicated seasonal employees. That’s the story of Montana Downs, a two-year-old operation running limited summer meets in Great Falls and Missoula, Mont. And after a conversation with one of the track’s staff members, it became clear to us they wouldn’t have it any other way.
 
“People don’t relate to the small tracks,” said Montana Downs racing secretary John Petti. “Pretty much there’s three of us running the day to day. It’s a very small operation.” Of course, when we describe him as a racing secretary, there’s more to his job title than that. “I’m the racing secretary, track announcer, set the morning-line odds and put together the programs.
 
“We don’t have the pressure of the bigger tracks,” Petti continued. “Our per capita is $20 to $30 a person. You can count the number of serious horseplayers on one hand.” He added that concessions often make up as much of the bottom line as handle, stating they made about $20,000 in food and beverage sales last weekend while total handle was $144,000.
 
We originally decided to cover Montana Downs for Good News Friday because of an article in the Great Falls Tribune heralding the financial success of last weekend’s race dates compared to last year. While the handle increased 57.7% over 2009, that’s a bit misleading as they added an extra day to the first weekend this year. According to Petti, the number of horses running increased by 14% and the handle increased 19% when you account for the additional day. So why the growth?
 
“I attribute that to the fact we have a large number of horses on the grounds and the horsemen are filling the races,” said Petti. Simple enough, but there has to be more to it than that, right? Petti went on to explain that Montana Downs is only in its second year of operation and that while the facilities have been around for a while, the new association had to earn the trust of local horsemen. They have, thus the increases across the board.
 
When asked if they have plans to expand beyond the two weekends in Great Falls and a later weekend in Missoula, Petti balked. He had just finished filling a 12-race card with six or more horses in each race but didn’t seem to believe it would grow much larger. “This is a hobby for everyone involved. Trainers will call me from work to check and see if their horses made a certain race.”
 
So what does our favorite racing secretary, odds-maker, track announcer and fry cook do the rest of the year? Is he on loan from another track that doesn’t run opposing meets? “I teach high school in Idaho,” he said.
 
Unwittingly, Petti has just taught his largest class ever something important about our industry. While we certainly need the big tracks and the big money to make our sport relevant, sometimes bigger isn’t necessarily better. The essence of our sport is a paying customer bringing his or her family to the track and enjoying the fresh air, a hot dog, a beer and the most majestic animals God has put on this earth. Here’s to hoping Montana Downs and John Petti will continue to teach us that lesson.

Copyright © 2010, Blenheim Publishing, LLC

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Tags: Breeders' Cup, Del Mar, Good News Friday, John Petti, Keeneland, liberation farm, Montana Downs, oak tree, Paulick Report, Ray Paulick, saratoga

This entry was posted on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 6:19 am and is filed under Good News Friday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.