On Virginia Derby Day, Colonial Looks to 2020 and Beyond

[Wandering Eyes]

Even as Colonial Downs management gears up for Saturday’s GIII Virginia Derby, the showcase race at the track’s first Thoroughbred meet since 2013, plans are already in the works for a longer season (20 to 30 dates), a slightly different spot on the calendar (late August into early October), and a change away from daily 5 p.m. post times (new slot to be determined) for 2020 and beyond.

“We love looking ahead,” John Marshall, Colonial’s executive vice president of operations, told TDN. “For 2020 we anticipate paying the same $500,000 average daily level of purses, even with more days. Our 2020 commitment will become more clear next spring. But in 2021, that’s when we’ll realize the full effect of the historical horse race gaming contribution to purses.”

New ownership took over the shuttered Virginia track last year, and for its first go-round, the management team aimed for a boutique, turf-centric, 15-date meet with purses fueled by the state’s recently legalized gaming revenues. Colonial also lowered takeout rates to 16% on straight wagers, 20% on exotics and pegged its Pick 5 at a promotional 12%.

Colonial’s main draw since the track opened in 1997 has always been its nine-furlong, 180-foot-wide, jewel of a turf course that can accommodate numerous rail placements and the bulk of the track’s overall races. The secondary racing surface is a 10-furlong dirt oval.

“We laid out our vision, and I feel like we’ve accomplished it and more,” Marshall said as the 2019 meet winds down to its Sept. 7 closure. “My first concern was horse population. We thought we would have issues with our location at this time of year. But the horsemen have answered the call, and we’ve been receiving entries from all over the place.”

According to Marshall, Colonial’s field size has averaged 8.7 starters going into Virginia Derby weekend.

“We’ve proven that we’re not Maryland-dependent,” Marshall explained. “I think the first myth that people believed was that Colonial would be fully dependent on Maryland horsemen. We thoroughly welcome and appreciate Maryland horsemen, don’t get me wrong. But I think that we’ve proven that with our purses, our surfaces, and our time of year, we’re attracting horsemen from everywhere. We’ve turned out to be a destination meet.”

Marshall said a key component to Colonial’s rebirth has been the less-is-more approach to race dates.

“With a boutique-style meet, we’re only running 15 days,” Marshall said. “We’re not trying to run 75 or 80 days in a race meet. By putting out 15 days and looking at the supply and demand of a short meet, we’ve successfully filled every day so far.”

Yet Marshall said he thinks that going forward, Colonial can bolster its number of race dates a bit while not diminishing the boutique flavor of the meet.

“One thing that we know for sure: We’re running greater than 15 days in 2020,” Marshall said. “We’re targeting between 20 and 30 days. The time of year? Our preference is to slide into the fall a little more deeper. We opened Aug. 8 this year. At first glance, it looks like we should have opened [in tandem with] Timonium [on Aug. 23]. That gets us into September and maybe the first week or two of October, three days a week.”

When TDN interviewed Marshall last fall, he outlined a long-range plan that had Colonial aspiring to dovetail with the all-turf meet at Kentucky Downs and to roughly align with the end of New Jersey’s grass racing season, with the idea of making Virginia a logical on-the-way stop for Northeast outfits that migrate south for winter racing. By eventually moving some race dates into October, he said Colonial could potentially have the second-highest average daily purse distribution in the country during that time frame, behind only Keeneland.

“We’re still trying to achieve all those things, exactly,” Marshall said. But he candidly admitted that Colonial’s announcing of its 2019 plans nearly a year in advance cost the track some scheduling flexibility, because competing tracks essentially got the last at-bat in planning their own race meets and major stakes.

“On Saturday’s Virginia Derby Day we have four stakes,” Marshall said by way of example. “We didn’t plan to compete with Kentucky Downs and their big day, and Saratoga is also having [a graded turf stakes for 3-year-olds]. We didn’t see that coming because we declared our [Virginia Derby] date so far in advance. I think in 2020, we’re going to have some history, a benchmark, and we’ll be better able to strategically plan our race days and our special days.”

Cracking into a crowded simulcasting market has also been a challenge for Colonial, which has a daily 5 p.m. Eastern first post.

“I can tell you, the early part of the card has been tough sledding, going against the end of Saratoga, Gulfstream, Monmouth, Arlington, and the beginning of Del Mar,” Marshall said. “Once we get clear of the tail end of those cards and we get into races four and beyond, we pick up steam. So the lesson learned there for us is we need to re-examine that post time and find a more lucrative spot, because there’s a lot of competition.”

That 5 p.m. slot might explain why Colonial–which consistently draws more entries per day than Charles Town–sometimes falls behind that rival’s long-established 7 p.m. simulcast signal in terms of handle generated per starter.

Using the three most recent race dates as a guide (Aug. 23, 24 and 29), Charles Town out-handled Colonial on two of those dates and had a higher handle-per-starter ratio on all three of them. Charles Town had total starters numbering 58, 47 and 61 on those dates. Colonial had 73, 91 and 72.

The per-starter handle disparity between the two tracks was greatest on Saturday, Aug. 24, when Colonial started its card about 45 minutes prior to off time for Saratoga’s GI Runhappy Travers S. and Charles Town had a first post 10 minutes after the Saratoga card ended. Despite having nearly twice as many entrants, a full menu of turf races, and takeout rates that are at the very low end of the industry scale, Colonial’s horseplayers still bet only an average of $9,372 per starter versus Charles Town’s $20,668.

“We believe that there is not a lot of new, organic handle out there,” Marshall explained. “So everything that we’ve handled has had to come from somewhere else. It was handle that belonged to [another track], and as a new venture we’ve had to patriate our market share from somebody else.”

Marshall said that in his view, Colonial’s meet-long overall handle trend is the better metric.

“In the nighttime time slot, beyond 5 p.m., we’ve consistently been number two in total handle behind Del Mar in our introductory year,” Marshall said. “Granted, it’s a distant number two–Del Mar is No. 1 and will always be in this time of year in that time slot. But we immediately went to number two from our opening day.”

 

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