Down to just four tracks hosting live racing, the mid-Atlantic region saw handle dip by nearly a quarter this past weekend, according to our HandleTrak report. The decline was driven in large part by the closure of The Meadowlands, whose season concluded a week ago, though the region also experienced a smaller decline on a track-over-track basis.
Overall, handle in the region — including Laurel Park, Charles Town, Penn National, and Parx Racing — fell from over $7.8 million a week ago to less than $5.9 million this past weekend, a 24.7 percent drop. With only five live race cards over the weekend, that meant that per-card handle averaged less than $1.2 million, a drop of a bit less than 10 percent from the prior weekend.
The biggest driver of the decline was the closure of The Meadowlands. The New Jersey track accounted for nearly $1.5 million in handle last weekend.
Two of the region’s four tracks saw handle rise. Charles Town’s handle rose by about 10 percent, to $984,000, in part because of apparent bridge-jumping on Amherst Street in the Tri-State Futurity. Bettors pumped more than $230,000 — about 23 percent of the track’s handle for the evening — into that race, with Amherst Street a 1-5 favorite. He won the race. Meanwhile, handle at Laurel, which carded a very strong card including four stakes, rose about 3.5 percent versus last week.
Handle at Penn National and Parx Racing dropped by between 15 and 20 percent for the weekend.
REGIONAL HANDLE BY WEEKEND
