Emerald Down’s 2023 live racing season concluded Sunday, Sept. 17 at the Auburn track as it began over four months ago, with perfect weather.<\/p>\n
During the 52-day meet conducted over 20 weekends, the track was rated fast on 51 of the 52 days, according to the Emerald Downs website. Attendance was up 16% over 2022, averaging 3,078 per race day. The biggest crowd of the year was on July 3 when over 9,100 people showed up for racing and fireworks. Over 8,000 attended live racing on July 23 when Corgi Races were the featured promotion. <\/p>\n
Overall handle was $60.47 million for an average of $1.16 million per day, according to Emerald Downs. While this was a decrease of 10.6% over 2022, the track’s retention from handle increased 3.7% due to changes in host fees. Total takeout decreased from 19.56% in 2022 to 18.87% in 2023.<\/p>\n
A total of 709 horses started 2,847 times over 435 races for an average field size of 6.54. There were 282 horses who started at least five times at the meet.<\/p>\n
Total purses distributed was $7.06 million, an average of $135,852 per race day, according to Emerald Downs. Purses for the 2023 race meet were generated as follows:<\/p>\n
• 60% from advance deposit wagering and simulcast revenue; 25% contribution from the Muckleshoot Tribe who own and operate the track; 12% from live racing; and 3% from fees.<\/p>\n
Emerald Downs will announce the race meet dates for 2024 in October, but the plan is to open on Saturday, May 4, Kentucky Derby Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Auburn track concluded 52-day, live-racing schedule on Sept. 17 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":538,"featured_media":64558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-64557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home2","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64557"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/538"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64557"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=64557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}