Is St. Louis about to become the third major U.S. metropolitan area to lose its only live horse-racing venue?
Fairmount Park, one of the country's smallest pari-mutuel wagering tracks, might not re-open for the spring meet in 2015. Declining handle, competition from nearby casinos and the tangled undergrowth of Illinois politics may have doomed the little track that barely could. Not to mention the track ownership's apparent inability to market Fairmount Park as a viable racing venue.
The track has struggled for years to stay alive as new gambling venues like the Casino Queen, about five miles away in East St. Louis, have sucked away local gambling dollars. The track has fought back by applying for a casino license, but Illinois politics and poor marketing have combined to so far thwart the track's attempts to compete.
Boston-area's Suffolk Downs recently closed because it lost a battle with the Wynn casino group for a lucrative gaming license. Colonial Downs, in Richmond, VA, lost out to competition from the five major casinos of nearby Maryland according to a local report. Fairmount Park's nearest gambling competition is the Casino Queen in East St. Louis, where revenue has fallen by 13% over the past year. Fairmount's application for a slot-machine licence would no doubt do further harm to the impoverished community, which draws 40% of its tax revenue from the casino.
Apparently in reaction to the Casino Queen's woes, a Chicago politician recently removed the Fairmount Park racetrack from a list of venues recommended to receive slot-machine licenses from the State of Illinois next year. One local report implied that the motivation for this was a combination of racial politics (East St. Louis is 95% African-American, as is the politician, Robert Rita) and a desire by Rita to win a casino license for his own constituency.
But if Fairmount Park closes it will surely be a matter of economics. The track is ranked number 53 out of the country's 69 pari-mutuels wagering tracks for horse-player value, according to a recent report by the Horseplayers Association of North America. The track also has a well-deserved reputation for dodgy riding tactics.
There are quite simply too many small, substandard racetracks in the U.S. like Fairmount Park chasing too few gambling dollars in mid-western cities like St. Louis. More of them will need to close in future if the sport is to recover. Let's get it over with.
