The amount of money bet on US races fell nearly 4 per cent in 2023, the biggest such drop in handle in 12 years.
Equibase reported Friday that more than $11.6 billion were bet on 31,746 races in the year that just ended, down 3.7 per cent from the $12.1 billion wagered on 33,452 races in 2022.
Because of the 5.5 per cent drop in the number of races, the average handle for each card actually went up nearly 2 per cent to $3,005,575.
According to The Jockey Club, which owns Equibase, the last time there was such a big drop in US handle was in 2011, when there was a loss of 5.7 per cent from the year before. That was the end of an eight-year period when other forms of legal gambling mushroomed, and the money wagered on racing plunged 29 per cent from its all-time high of nearly $15.2 billion in 2003.
Handle for US races has fallen four of the last five years with the lone exception being 2021, when there was a nearly 12 per cent rebound coming out of the height of the COVID pandemic when racing was not as restricted as other sports.
Purses were flat. They totalled more than $1.2 billion last year, down 0.7 per cent from 2022.
The number of starts fell 3 per cent, but partly because of the drop in total races, there was a nearly 2 per cent rise in field sizes from 7.3 to 7.4.
The Equibase report also said the fall quarter had a 1.7 per cent drop in handle from the same three months in 2022. December had a rally with a 6.6 percent rise over the final month the year before in spite of a 10 percent dip in the number of race days.
