NYRA Survives Brutal Winter, Looks Forward to Better Days Ahead

by Bill Finley

With 16 full card cancellations and a horse shortage that allowed the racing office to card just eight races on many occasions, this was a winter that the New York Racing Association would like to forget. Yet yesterday’s meeting of the New York Racing Association Reorganization Board at times took on a celebratory tone as management and Board members said that the organization battled back valiantly against the weather and actually, when including VLT revenue, made a small profit. 

It was the first NYRA Board meeting since December and the first run by newly appointed Chairman of the Board Anthony Bonomo, whose confirmation did not come until yesterday. 

Plenty of numbers were tossed around yesterday at the Midtown Manhattan meeting, including the fact that there was an $11.2-million loss when it came to racing operations in the first quarter of 2015. But expectations, officials said, were that the numbers would be worse. Handle on Aqueduct racing was off $85 million during the first quarter. 

“We quickly responded to unfavorable conditions, as we did during the first quarter of this year,” NYRA CEO Chris Kay said. “Severe winter weather reduced the number of race days and handle, but we took aggressive steps to offset these losses.” 

NYRA officials said it weathered the tough winter by cutting back on expenses and by doing healthy business taking wagering on imported simulcast signals. 

“It was very tough,” Kay said. “What we did, for example, with certain budget items, I said we were planning to spend X and I cut that in half. There were certain positions eliminated. For example, I have been both Chief CEO and Chief Human Resources officer for last four months. There were positions where we thought we would hire in the first quarter and postponed things… We didn’t just cut, we weighed the pros and cons and tried to be very prudent about how we went about this.” 

Still, NYRA lost $11.2 million on the racing end during the winter and also saw an inordinately high number of horses break down. Despite all that, Board member Len Riggio was adamant that winter racing is here to stay. 

“We’re going to continue to have winter meets,” he said. “There’s no question about that. The racing committee and the Board are committed to winter racing. People talk about Belmont being open year-round, but you’d need hundreds of millions of dollars to make that happen.” 

When asked if there would even be a brief interruption of the schedule, like, perhaps, no racing in January or Februray, Riggio said: “That is absolutely not under consideration.” 

Riggio went on to explain that even if NYRA shut down in the winter the fixed costs involved with running the operation would still have to be dealt with and reasoned that NYRA might lose even more money if it closed in the winter.” 
The Reorganization Board was created to come up with a plan for NYRA’s future and its original mandate was to present one to Governor Andrew Cuomo by April of this year. That isn’t going to happen and NYRA officials now say they are hopeful a plan will be in place by April of next year. 

“It’s complicated, “Bonomo said. “This isn’t simple. There are a lot of moving parts, a lot of different things happening. Certainly NYRA is making an effort to get there, but the first thing we have to be concerned with is racing and how we are doing in the racing business.” 

Bonomo didn’t exactly sound like he was in any hurry to finalize a reorganization plan. 

“We’ve had a good year, we are meeting our obligations and we are working hard to get there,” he said. “When we get there and how we get there, we will see. It’s fair to say we’ve had our first profitable year in 13 years. We’re keeping the focus on the racing stuff; the other thing will play itself out. 

“At the end of day we need to focus on what did happen. So what did happen? Racing made a profit, we’ve done a tremendous amount of things at the individual tracks to enhance the guest experience. We’re trying to keep our eye on the ball, which is to make racing better.” 

Kay also spoke about problems NYRA had dealing with the overflow crowd at last year’s Belmont and the many complaints from customers. He vowed last year’s problems would be fixed and that talks have taken place with the Long Island Railroad to ensure that people can leave the track after the races in a reasonable amount of time. 

The meeting was briefly interrupted by a fan named Wayne Johnson, who scolded NYRA for not doing more to protect the horses and said the number of breakdowns over the winter was unacceptable. 

“I won’t rest until no horses die on your racetracks,” he said.