Hollywood Park Hopes Fans Will Come Back

Will the fans return?

That question, and not which horse is going to win which race, was the main topic of conversation at Hollywood Park Tuesday.

The Inglewood track will open its 1988 spring-summer meeting today in a mood that is perhaps best described as cautiously optimistic.

Reason for the optimism is not difficult to discover: An improved stakes schedule, an increase in the purses and a renovated turf course should translate into racing of a higher quality.

Reason for the caution is equally easy to find: Average attendance at the last spring-summer meeting was the lowest since 1941 and, more ominous, Santa Anita’s closing figures showed a decline in both track attendance and handle.

What will happen at Hollywood Park, though, is likely to be determined as much by what occurs off the track as on it.

Inter-track wagering in Southern California has so far had seemingly contradictory results. It has both decreased and increased attendance and handle. Fewer fans are betting less money at the track, but more fans are wagering more money on horse racing.

Marge Everett, Hollywood Park’s chairman and chief executive officer, said Tuesday that she sees no cause for alarm in the fact that Santa Anita, which has enjoyed greater success than Hollywood Park in recent years, has experienced an on-track downturn.

“I looked at the results of the Santa Anita meeting, and there was a little softness in the attendance,” Everett said. “They’ve done a very good job, as always, so I’m not certain whether it’s the gridlock of traffic that has caught up with them now, as it did with us the last two or three years, or whether it’s something that might impact on us this year.”

If it is simply inter-track wagering that brought about Santa Anita’s on-track decreases of 9% in average daily attendance and 3.3% in average daily handle, then gains made in off-track attendance and handle should more than compensate for the drop, Everett believes.

“I’m not concerned about inter-track,” she said. “I think inter-track can only help us. For instance, some of the people that we’ve lost from distant points we’ll now possibly begin to pick up again because they’ll participate through the inter-track. We are not negative at all about the impact it will have on us.

“I was always brought up by my father to be against off-track betting, and inter-track, simulcast, whatever we want to call it, is obviously a form of it (but) . . . we might be able to expand our market.”

What off-track betting has led to, Everett said, is a closer degree of cooperation among the tracks and the various racing groups.

“We’re all working very closely together,” she said. “We all think there’s great potential in creating new patrons for the race track. That’s a view that I’d have to share.”

The improved schedule--all but 6 of the 68-day meeting’s 35 added-money events are graded, including 13 that have Grade I status--will help Hollywood Park, as will the increase in purses, she said.

“We think that we will benefit more than Santa Anita (which also increased purses) in the respect that we were impacted more (than the Arcadia track) by horses going up north the last two or three years,” Everett said. “It left us short fields, and it sometimes took horses that could have been helpful to us in either allowance or stake races.

“Now, with the additional income from simulcast, (larger purses) should provide the public with better racing down here because there is no lure to go elsewhere when we can provide them with more funds right down in our own back yard. We think that our racing program will be stronger.”

A sore point at Hollywood Park in recent years, and especially last year, has been the poor condition of the grass course. Correcting that situation, Everett admitted, was crucial.

“Last year it hurt our racing program, not to be able to use the course for most of the meeting,” she said. “It put pressure on Eual (Wyatt, Hollywood Park’s racing secretary), and we had much poor racing because we had a lot of good grass horses that couldn’t participate and as a result you had much more cheaper races.”

This season, with the main track in fine condition and the grass course having benefited from the planting of 12 acres of sod, the quality of the racing should improve, Everett said.

And that, she hopes, will answer Tuesday’s question and bring about a return of the fans.

Horse Racing Notes

The spring-summer meeting runs through July 25 and the Grade I races include the $300,000 Hollywood Invitational May 30, the $300,000 Californian June 12, the $500,000 Hollywood Gold Cup June 26 and the $250,000 Sunset Handicap on closing day, July 25.

Today’s opening feature race of the meeting, the $75,000-added Debonair Stakes, has attracted a field of eight 3-year-olds. Topping the list in the 7-furlong event is Success Express, winner of last year’s $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and a fourth-place finisher in this spring’s Gotham Stakes. The Eugene Klein-owned and Wayne Lukas-trained colt will be ridden by Gary Stevens and will carry top weight of 122 pounds from the inside post.

The complete field in post-position order and including jockey and weight: Success Express, Stevens, 122; Dr. Brent, Alex Solis, 119; Balote, Bill Shoemaker, 117; Secret Meeting, Laffit Pincay, 114; Accomplish Ridge, Rafael Meza, 114; Prospector’s Gamble, Chris McCarron, 117; Claim, Aaron Gryder, 114; Mr. Game Player, Eddie Delahoussaye, 114.

Bine Masters was been named track announcer Tuesday. Masters, 30, has been serving as executive director of the Pacific Coast Quarter Horse Racing Assn. for the past two years. Masters will also will be assisting in public relations and marketing.