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Lone Star has sizzle, no steak
By GARY WEST
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
GRAND PRAIRIE - If plans and ideas by themselves guaranteed bright prospects, then Lone Star Park would have the aurora borealis of futures. Texas horsemen would be feverish with anticipation and racing fans giddy with eagerness, because Lone Star general manager Drew Shubeck has an abundance of plans and ideas.
But plans and ideas lead to positive results only when nurtured. And the environment in Texas for racing right now is hardly nurturing.
Lone Star Park at Grand Prairie concluded its 10th spring-summer season of racing Sunday with a slight downturn in business from a year ago.
Average daily attendance dipped to 6,900, down 1.3 percent from last year's 7,012. Average on-track handle for the season was about the same, or $1.1 million, although when the final tabulations are in, it's expected to be down about 2.1 percent from last year.
In other words, on-track business has leveled off. And the level is very un-Texan and modest compared to the expectations people had for the sport when they embraced it in a statewide referendum nearly 20 years ago. It's even modest when compared to Lone Star's highs -- 9,808 for average daily attendance in 1998; $1,357,670 for average on-track handle in 1999.
But after his first season as general manager, Shubeck has many plans and ideas. For next year, he said, Lone Star intends to revise its 66-day schedule, opening in early April and again concluding in July, but with four days of racing each week, except for some special holiday programs.
"We learned we just can't go with five days a week," he said. "We don't have the horse population for that."
This year, Lone Star offered racing five days a week in April and May, but next year it intends to drop Wednesdays from the regular schedule.
And he has plans to improve the grandstand so that it's more capable of handling large crowds comfortably on big-race days. Shubeck said he hopes to open up the paddock area, make it more accommodating, add a bar to the first floor, improve the Post Time Pavilion and add television monitors.
Lone Star will also make improvements to its stable area. And an extensive plan is in place to improve the turf course during the off-season, Shubeck said.
They're good plans and ideas that could at least help maintain business levels next year, as well as the quality of racing. These plans and ideas could even help to nudge the numbers up slightly.
But the numbers for the season that just concluded stress one thing: Lone Star's competitive disadvantage. Not long ago, Lone Star's simulcast signal was a beacon for horseplayers. On a typical weekday evening, it was the best simulcast signal out there.
But that's no longer necessarily so. Racetracks such as Evangeline Downs and Delta Downs have seen their purses increase dramatically in recent years, thanks largely to revenue from slot machines, and with the increases, their racing has improved and their audiences have grown. Meanwhile Lone Star's average daily purses have declined slightly and have taken along with them the quality of racing.
And so this year, the off-track simulcast handle fell 11.4 percent from a year ago, to an average of $1.5 million. It's down 25 percent from 2002.
"Lone Star is healthy," Shubeck said. "We make money. But we're being squeezed."
Squeezed by rising costs, squeezed by increased competition, squeezed from all sides, Lone Star finds itself in an environment that doesn't nurture ideas, or plans, or investments in the future. Many Texas owners already have sent their horses elsewhere, and as a result the foal crop, or the number of thoroughbreds born in the state, declined 28.3 percent from 1994 to 2004, according to The Jockey Club.
And Lone Star has found it increasingly difficult to attract horses even for the richest races. This year's Lone Star Derby had a field of just six, the Lone Star Oaks a field of seven and the Dallas Turf Cup a field of six.
Shubeck said he was, for the most part, happy with the Lone Star season -- happy with the business levels, with the racing. And he has some worthwhile ideas and sound plans for the future. But in an environment that's hardly nurturing, the future could look very much like the recent past.
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