The owner of the Meadowlands writes about starting a GoFundMe campaign to raise between $1 and $2 million. Is he serious? Is it all tongue and cheek? You decide.

by Jeff Gural

After once again waking up on Sunday and reading a negative story about the way I run the Meadowlands, it finally dawned on me that rather than continue to fund the losses each year to keep the place open it would make far more sense for those people who object to my methods to join together and pick up the cost of running the facility.

We have set up a GoFundMe page where all of the people who do not like the way I run things can chip in and pick up the cost of keeping the place open, which I estimate is somewhere between $1 million and $2 million. This is on top of the $15 million that I have already lost over the last few years.

Based on last week’s performance, it would seem logical that the owners of Springsteen and Lady Shadow would be willing to chip in $100,000 each so that they could race next year without a detention barn and without any samples going to Hong Kong. Now that Renee Allard has bought some high-priced yearlings, I would think he certainly would be willing to chip in $100,000 so that he could race them at the Meadowlands next year in our stakes. I would think there must be 20 or so trainers who would be more than happy to put up $10,000 each to race their horses at the Meadowlands and 50 or so owners who use these trainers would also be happy to race at my tracks.

I would think the people who criticize me on horseplop should together be able to round up $100,000 and Joe (Faraldo) should contribute something since he would be able to drive in the amateur races at my tracks. If we could raise $1 million it would be my intention to allow all the drug guys to race, which would help immensely as I would have fuller fields and more races. I could eliminate the detention barns which would save significant money, do away with our out-of-competition testing program, along with the cost of sending these samples to Hong Kong, as well as all of the other costly efforts that we have embarked on to try to determine what drugs are being used. That would probably save $300,000 or $400,000.

It would not matter that much if the older horses stayed racing so I could eliminate the TVG races and keep the money they give me for sponsoring them since they don’t really care. I have to believe that with the $1 million, plus all of the benefits I just outlined, I could easily have the Meadowlands break even. I would no longer have to write a check each year and, best of all, I would not get aggravated on Sunday mornings when I have to read all of the critical articles where I am called a punk, I am playing God and all of the other criticisms from your readers.

I do not know why I didn’t think of this sooner.

To contribute, please go here.