Has handle at Woodbine Mohawk Park benefitted from The Big M’s betting declines?

More thoughts on handle trends as four times over the last five racing nights,
Mohawk has beaten The Meadowlands.

by Brett Sturman

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. I doubt my editor will let me submit only a chart as the entire content for this column, but what’s occurring over recent weeks can clearly be presented without comment in the form of a visual.

The chart shows handle comparison between The Meadowlands and Woodbine Mohawk Park since the start of March. The downward trend to The Meadowlands’ handle was neatly documented last week in a column by Debbie Little, so that component of the chart isn’t new information, but an extension to that story could be the relationship to Mohawk. As The Meadowlands’ handle has fallen, handle from Mohawk has increased.

The inverse handle relationship between the two premier tracks in recent weeks may be purely coincidental and unrelated to recent Meadowlands initiatives around post time drag elimination and restrictions to the timing of computer assisted wagering which may have impacted high volume sources of business, but it’s a trend emerging as too noticeable to dismiss.

It’s known that industry handle across the board is down this year. It’s stubbornly sticking at about a 15 per cent decline here in the U.S. and close to 18 per cent in Canada year-to-date. And in Little’s column, certain macroeconomic factors were cited as contributing factors to the handle decline. Those factors may very well be playing a part to some degree, but that wouldn’t explain the diverging trends over the last month.

With the way Mohawk has been bucking economic and industry trends of late — coinciding with changes implemented at The Meadowlands — I feel that it at least raises the question as to if and what extent is Mohawk a beneficiary.

Except for Grand Circuit days at Mohawk, or days where there are large carryovers and mandatory payouts, The Meadowlands almost always outhandles the Ontario track. But now, four times over the last five racing nights, Mohawk has beaten The Meadowlands. And some of those nights by wide margins.

Just this past Friday (May 9), Mohawk posted $2.5 million to The Meadowlands’ $1.6 million, for a difference of over $900,000. The Friday prior, Mohawk outhandled The Meadowlands by over $1 million. The gap would be even wider if looking at the per-race averages, as all of The Meadowlands’ figures are based from 14-race cards, whereas Mohawk has been anywhere from just 11 to 13 races.

Here’s another shocking number: The Meadowlands and Mohawk both saw Kentucky-Derby inspired bumps in handle last Saturday (May 3), with Mohawk coming in over $600,000 ahead in handle. But last year, on the same Kentucky Derby Saturday, The Meadowlands outhandled Mohawk $3.8 million to $2.4 million. Between The Meadowlands going from plus $1.4 million to minus $600,000, that’s over a $2 million swing in handle between the tracks for the same year-over-year card.

The primary purpose of this column is simply to bring forward the recent trends and not to necessarily provide the “why” behind them. I could make some educated guesses, but I don’t know for sure. But continuing to follow these trends is important not only to these respective tracks, but because of how they drive the total industry handle. For example, the increases to Mohawk handle have helped narrow the total Canadian handle gap. Though still down 17.7 per cent for the year from last year, that number was almost 20 per cent a month ago.

In other industry handle observations, I’m wondering what was the point in Yonkers having the Borgata and Matchmaker series on a Friday as opposed to Monday. Beyond Monday already being the day of the week in which all of the preliminary legs were run for the Borgata, as were past year’s series finals, it’s more importantly the day of the week they handle the highest.

Why take races designated as Grade 1’s and remove them from the day of the week people will bet them the most and place them on the day of the week when the least amount of people will bet on it, due to a far more vast landscape with other thoroughbred and harness signals?

As another self-destructive, yet entirely predictable result, handle for Friday’s Borgata and Matchmaker dual Grade-1 finals card was just $697,000. By comparison, the completely ordinary Monday card from Yonkers last week handed more at $760,000. It was difficult to find historical Borgata handles, but through a Google search I found that the same card in 2022 handled $1.2 million. It was on a Monday.

For all the broader trends working against the industry when it comes to sustaining handle as it is, examples like this show their own direct share of the blame.