The 4800 Preakness Cap is Low. Should Expectations Be Even Lower?

[Wandering Eyes]

Within the industry, TSG is currently getting batted around like a pinata, and many of the company's woes are self-inflicted.

In recent years TSG has pulled the plug on racing at Portland Meadows and Golden Gate Fields,  and in many aspects is leaving Maryland racing in a worse-off state than when the company acquired Pimlico and Laurel 15 years ago.

TSG is also currently embroiled in a controversial “decoupling” attempt in Florida to sever its live racing obligation from its casino privileges at Gulfstream Park.

And just last week, TSG was instrumental in lobbying for the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) to deny permits for two geographically distant Northern California fairs to conduct short race meets in 2026 out of concern that the TSG-owned Santa Anita Park, which has been financially strained in recent seasons, would suffer because of lost simulcasting revenue.

At that Feb. 27 CHRB meeting, the board's vice-chair, Oscar Gonzales, openly questioned why other commissioners were deferring to the TSG-backed plan to consolidate all of California's racing in the Southern part of the state, where Santa Anita tenuously remains the flagship track.

“We see what [TSG has] done in Maryland,” Gonzales said. We see what they're doing in Florida. But we're willing to put all of our chips [in SoCal, essentially on Santa Anita] rather than spreading them out?”

The number of GI Kentucky Derby starters who went on to compete in the Preakness began to really tail off around the same time TSG took over Maryland racing in 2011.

That decline is certainly not the outright fault of TSG. It is actually more attributable to the “less is more” training methodology that has cycled into vogue over the past several decades.

But it did happen during TSG's stewardship of Maryland racing.

Historically, the resilient Preakness has been able to overachieve by making the most out of being an “event” as much as a horse race.

And in all fairness, even if you didn't like some of the company's specific ideas, TSG did try to capitalize on and boost the entertainment aspect of the Preakness as best as it could.

At the moment, the legacy of the Preakness under TSG spans roughly from Kegasus (the beer-swilling centaur mascot who was introduced just before TSG took control of Pimlico and Laurel in 2011) to the cryptocurrency craze that spawned TSG's issuance of Preakness-themed non-fungible tokens in 2021 (a highly speculative collectibles concept that few people in the racing world understood before the marketplace for them completely cratered within a year).

But now it looks like we'll have to leave room in the record books to see whether the 2026 Preakness attendance cap of 4,800 needs to have its own unique chapter written up in better-than-expected terms, or if the idea fizzles to the point where it's just a footnote describing a dubious move at a precarious time for the Preakness.

 

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