Kentucky Downs Will Look to Add Two More Racing Dates in 2020

According to track Senior Vice President and General Manager Ted Nicholson, Kentucky Downs will ask the Kentucky Racing Commission later this week to extend its 2020 meet from five to seven days. Nicholson said he and track ownership are confident the request will be granted.

The decision to expand comes after the track was sold in March to Ron Winchell and Marc Falcone.

“It's pretty simple. If you've ever been to the facility you know there are a lot of fixed costs that go into putting on a show like the one we put on,” Nicholson said. “Our new owners would like to be to more profitable. I don't blame them at all. They feel one way to accomplish this is to add a few more dates.”

Kentucky Downs may be the sport's most unique track. It offers an average of $2.3 million a day in purses, tops in the U.S., and second in the world behind only the top-level Japan Association tracks. The bulk of the purse money comes from the profits from the historical horse racing machines (HHR) at the facility, which is on the Kentucky-Tennessee border. By spreading that money out over five days, as opposed to 30-40, Kentucky Downs can offer purses that include $130,000 maiden races and a $1-million stakes, the GIII Calumet Farm Kentucky Turf Cup. In addition, Kentucky Downs sends about $5 million to Ellis Park to help bolster that track's purses.

Nicholson believes that an expansion to seven days will not mean a reduction in purses at Kentucky Downs or in the amount turned over to Ellis. He also said that because Kentucky Downs has the ability to move rails on the turf course to several different spots, no one part of the turf course will get too chewed up due to additional racing or cause a safety issue.

“We feel like we can comfortably add two more days,” he said. “We can move the rail around so there should not be an safety issues. There is a tremendous amount of purse money that we have available to us, even with the money we give Ellis. I'm sure that will continue because our numbers continue to grow on the historical horse racing side. On the HHR side, so far this year we've seen a 39% increase in business. I'm not a financial genius, but this is the type of thing that once we put the numbers down to paper, I'm sure we'll see that we can pull it off.”

Kentucky Downs has tried to expand before, but ran into political problems when it did so. In 2014, the track asked the commission for one additional date, but the request was denied because that date meant overlapping with Churchill Downs.  That was the first year Churchill took over the late summer, early fall dates that had always belonged to Turfway Park.

But Kentucky Downs has since moved its meet up to begin with the Saturday of Labor Day weekend and can easily squeeze in seven dates without conflicting with Churchill.

“Four or five years ago, [previous owner] Corey [Johnsen] requested some more days and he didn't get them,” Nicholson said. “That was a different racing commission than the one sitting there today and there is a new governor and a whole new set of circumstances. We feel that things should play more in our favor now that people see what we've been about and what we've done for the entire commonwealth of Kentucky with our purses and the way we disperse them to Ellis.”

After opening the first day of the three-day Labor Day weekend, Kentucky Downs is dark the next two days. Nicholson said he'd like to see that change.

“In a perfect world, I'd love to have two days over the Labor Day weekend,” he said. “I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Why can't you run at least two days over that weekend?' They say that if we did, they'd come and make a whole weekend out of it with the wife, family, friends. Nashville has become such a huge tourist destination. And in the last five years, it's gone crazy. I'd like to benefit from that.”

Meanwhile, Kentucky Downs continues to smash its records for handle. A total of $8.46 million was wagered Saturday, a 36% increase over opening day in 2018. The track handled $36.4 million for the meet last year, the sixth straight year it had broke the handle record for the meet.