Modernizing horse racing
In a Q&A with John Cherwa, Belinda Stronach discusses her plans to advance the fan experience.
Belinda Stronach, by any measuring stick, is one of the most powerful people in horse racing. As president and chairwoman of the Stronach Group, which owns Santa Anita, Golden Gate and tracks in Florida and Maryland, she runs the family business and has taken it on herself to try to remake the struggling sport. Stronach, 52, is familiar with the spotlight, having been a member of Parliament in Canada from 2004 to 2008. She was elected as a conservative and then reelected as a liberal, so she is not afraid to go her own way.
Stronach, who does not grant many media interviews, sat down with The Times for 30 minutes recently at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore to discuss the future of Santa Anita and horse racing. She was equal parts confident, charming and cautious but more than anything stayed on the points she wanted to make. The interview is edited for brevity and clarity.
Stronach Group chief operating officer Tim Ritvo has said that progress has been slow at Santa Anita. Is the track where you want it to be?
I have tremendous faith and confidence in Tim. … When you look at his background, he was a jockey, he’s been a trainer, [he’s been an executive]. I believe the horsemen respect him. People know that he has the best interests of not only the company in mind, but the industry. He’s truly passionate about creating a viable, sustainable growth in our sport. What we’re putting forward are those kind of things to make sure that we look to how to create that feeder system, in that we have more people interested in becoming horse owners. We create greater field sizes, which is good for betting and our sport. He will do the best he can to take Santa Anita even more forward.
But is it as far along as you thought it would be after this amount of time?
Tim is making great progress and I continue to think he will make great progress.
Do you have any kind of timetable?
As a management team, we want to push as aggressively as we can but within reason of what’s doable and what makes sense. We’re a very committed group. We move as fast as we can and we make the changes that are most readily apparent. I don’t want to state a timetable because, as you know, it is a stakeholder [owners, trainer, jockeys, regulatory agencies] sport. … We want to make sure we’re pushing forward with the changes that strengthen the sport. We have to make sure we do that properly with all the stakeholders involved.
What kind of metric do you use for success?
It’s a number of things. First of all, it would be profitability. At the end of the day, we are a business. We’ll be measured by the profits we make. It’s looking at things like handle. It’s looking at the interests of all of our stakeholders. There’s also the employee perspective, that we have happy, engaged employees, that we’re making profits, that the handle is up, increasing field sizes, are we cultivating more owners and looking at it that way. Financials will show if we are doing things right. Would you be happy with 3% growth? 5% growth? 10% growth?
We’re not happy with 3% growth a year. But we’re a private company and those are things we don’t really talk about. Let me just say it’s about growing handle, making sure we look at what is [in] the best interest of the industry. So, it’s a bunch of different metrics that we would attribute to being successful.
It’s no secret that California is a really tough case because its isolation prevents the vanning of horses to other tracks, and it doesn’t have casinos. Can you see a scenario where if things just flatten out that you would look to realize the value of that land?
First of all, I don’t believe things will flatten out because we are a very thoughtful, very proactive management team. We’re very committed to horse racing. I truly believe it’s the last great sports legacy platform that hasn’t modernized. … I feel we will get there. There’s no question because we’ve seen this with other tracks in different jurisdictions, and many of those tracks were built in the ’30s and ’40s and ’50s when they were on the outskirts of cities. Now you have encroachment of the city around the racetrack, which makes the land increasingly more valuable. But I believe we can run a very successful racing, wagering and entertainment operation that will be compelling enough to say we can do this, to say we can achieve this as [opposed] to turning this purely into a real estate play.
Do the extra rules and regulations of California frustrate you?
With respect to rules and regulations, we have to make our case for what we need to do as a business to best serve the industry. … We need to grow our fans and we need to look at that. It’s not just being able to compete against other racetracks, and other companies that offer horse racing. We are competing for customers beyond horse racing. We need to make sure we can curate the experiences — that it’s compelling enough to get them to our venues and our facilities. So, that’s our focus. Today’s customer, when they come to a stadium or venue, they want to be able to create their own adventure. So, we need to make sure we have all kinds of different offerings that appeal to a variety of potential guests.
What do you think is the biggest problem facing racing?
Stepping back, when you look to the ’50s, there was a lot of attendance, people went to the races. Handle was high. But the industry didn’t evolve and stay competitive and other sporting events and properties started to take away market share. Television wasn’t embraced at the time because they felt it would impact on-track attendance. Any time you ignore technology and don’t embrace what the customer would like, then that’s a real risk. The industry hasn’t been innovative enough, embraced technology and created those compelling, creative experiences that customers wish to have today. … The beautiful thing with our sport is it’s fast and dynamic, it’s exciting and it’s constant. So that’s one of the things we’re heavily focusing on for the future is technology and how to create a seamless digital experience across the board.
sports@latimes.com A longer version of this interview is available at latimes.com/sports.