Woodbine Innovations Key to 'Bright Future'

On the eve of the 159th Queen's Plate, the oldest continually run race in North America, Woodbine CEO Jim Lawson sat down with BloodHorse Daily editor Claire Crosby to talk tradition, progress, and the challenges faced by the Toronto track—and the racing world in general.

Claire Crosby: The Queen's Plate moved on the schedule this season, to Saturday from Sunday. What inspired that decision?

Jim Lawson: The Saturday move is mostly related to wagering. We've been tracking our numbers and, for the most part, we have better wagering on Saturdays than we do on Sundays. Part of that is related to the NFL. Our numbers spike in the fall on Saturdays versus Sundays, and my view is it's related to NFL action. We analyzed the heck out of it, and we think there's a better chance of more wagering on Saturdays.

The other phenomenon related to wagering is, we do better when we're going back-to-back with U.S. tracks. People are out wagering, and they'll wager on Belmont and then they'll wager on us. 

One of our hesitations of moving from Sunday to Saturday was that we wouldn't get the good American jockeys to come up. This is the first time we've done this, and we have squelched that concern with Joel Rosario, Javier Castellano, Jose Ortiz, John Velazquez and more showing up, so it's pretty nice to see them coming up here. We've answered that question—for the right horses and the right card, they will come up.

CC: You mentioned going back-to-back against key U.S. tracks, but wagering on Woodbine recently became available in Australia as well. What was it about the market there that made it attractive?

JL: The numbers speak for themselves, how popular racing is there. There's a strong love and demand for horse racing and wagering on the sport. We do well even with our harness racing product there. It's really a case, just like running any business, of looking for new markets, and Australia is a natural for us.

We're a small percentage of the U.S. market, say 3%, and just growing that by 1% or 2% is very material for us, and hopefully we can increase that U.S. market. That's important to us.

CC: What challenges does Woodbine face with its equine population?



JL: We're somewhat like California in that we're sort of an island here. We're not sitting in Indiana or Illinois or some racetrack where horses will easily ship out of Churchill Downs or Keeneland or from training centers and run here. The border is a bigger impediment in horse people's minds than I think it really is. They see it as a big hurdle, but it's not. People will ship to Mountaineer, but they won't ship to Woodbine. It's not that big of a trip, we have a great backstretch, we're very accommodating, and I'd like to think we can break down some of that mentality in the future. 

CC: Along those lines, what incentives do owners have to run at Woodbine?

JL: We're trying so many new things to generate interest. Our incentive for the first few weeks of the meet, and now we've extended it, for all runners in a race was $400—and we've moved it to $1,000. We're working very hard at increasing our wagering worldwide, and we want to increase our purses. I think that's a key to attracting horses and increasing field sizes.

In terms of our stakes program, we worked with Breeders' Cup to make the Highlander Stakes (G1T) a Breeders' Cup Challenge "Win and You're In" event, and we're looking at developing a 2-year-old turf sprint Breeders' Cup Challenge race. And we certainly are trying to get some Japanese horses to come over. We've had one, Taiki Blizzard, who ran in the 1996 Breeders' Cup Classic (G1). 

We built our turf endurance series. That starts Sunday. We had 17 entries for the race, which generates some excitement. We increased purses for that and put a bonus in.

I would also like to have less restricted races. I think horse racing in North America has suffered somewhat from having too many tight conditions. It's probably a function a little bit of getting completely away from a handicap approach to racing, where you can encourage horses to run for less weight than others in the race. Everyone is looking for that. I think we have to encourage people to run.

We're very sensitive to equine safety, and we want to do it right, but we may encourage horses to run every three weeks. Equine safety is No. 1, and we'll put appropriate controls on that, but imagine what that would do for our field size if horses were running every three weeks instead of every five weeks.

Last year, I threw out a challenge and said, 'Listen, guys, I'm probably not the first to ever do it, but I'd like to try this—write a race for gray horses only.' They said, 'We'll never be able to do it. What kind of condition?' I said, 'Don't make it claiming, make it a handicap, a $25,000 starter or something like that, and then you'll get a 3-year-old filly in at 114 taking a chance against an older gelding at 145.' We ended up with 10 or 12 horses, and it was pretty fun, actually. It's an example of just getting horses to run against each other.

CC: Clearly the new turf course at Woodbine is part of the innovation. Talk about the decision to replace the harness track and hopes for the second course.

JL: It wasn't easy for me to get the turf course here when half of my board are harness-racing guys, and it meant the harness horses were moving, but it was a very well-thought-out decision. We really needed to generate another source of gaming, so my approach to the Provincial Government was, 'If you will support Mohawk with a gaming facility, which is desperately needed income for us to keep it going, then we'll commit to Mohawk 12 months per year. It will be a year-round facility, we'll keep the lights on.' It also gave us the opportunity to put in the turf course and complement the whole transition, and the turf course is going to help attract and support additional horses.

It's going to be a world-class course in terms of its composition, grass, and sand texture. We spent a quarter of a million dollars on adding fiber to it so it will bind. It's got great drainage so it will bind well, even when it's wet. It has a modern irrigation system; it's really state of the art. Hopefully, races will not come off the turf very often at all, and combined with our E.P. Taylor course, we're going to run five or six races on the turf every day next year. We're also going to have some exclusive turf days, and we're going to make noise in the Thoroughbred industry in North America by attracting turf horses. When you see what happens at Kentucky Downs with people just flocking there with their horses—I appreciate that the meet is short, but there's still a ton of people drawn there because they know they can run their horses on the turf. That's what we want to achieve.

I think big bettors love all the angles that come up in turf racing. We get more bet on an eight-horse field on the turf than we get on an eight-horse field on Tapeta. That's why people are attracted to horse racing wagering. It's skilled betting, and in the mind of an astute bettor, turf racing produces additional challenges and angles. If we can get large field sizes on the turf, those are our biggest-bet races, and if we can do that more often, it spells success.

CC: What lies ahead for Woodbine from a development standpoint, especially given the historic funding agreement that was signed with the Ontario Government in May?

JL: Between our relationship with the gaming expansion, which offers years and years of security and sustainability, plus what we're doing with our real estate, the good news is there's a very stable, bright future here. We're sitting on $2 billion worth of land here, 700 acres, the largest undeveloped tract of land in the greater Toronto area. We're land-leasing the land to generate an income stream here for decades, all to support racing, and we need to take advantage and unlock the value of that asset. And unlocking the value of that asset is primarily being designed to support horse racing, to make sure this sport is supported here for 20 years, 30 years, 50 years. 

For tax purposes, most of our income is from real estate, and it's passive income, so we need to be taxable in order to take the deductions against it, so we changed from a non-profit, but it's really a technical reason. We are effectively a non-profit in the sense that we don't have any shareholders, and our single mandate is horse racing. At the core of this world at Woodbine, it's all about Thoroughbred racing, Standardbred racing, that's all we do, that's all we want to do, and anything we generate in terms of cash flow goes back into horse racing.

I know our mandate will never change, our corporate articles won't allow it. We've got a great board who understands that, a great management team, and everything we're about is trying to support racing. All of us who are close to horse racing also appreciate how hard-working the people are in this industry, how much they love the horses, and how many people are actually employed per horse that is racing, and I think that's important to support the industry and also provide jobs.

Overall, we're very progressive, we're very innovative, and I think it spells for a good future. We're passionate about the sport, we want to grow racing, we want to be the turf destination in North America, and we want to offer great overnight purses in particular. What we're doing is exciting. If you like racing, it's exciting what's going on here.

CC: Mike Maker recently sent a string to Woodbine, and I know you're recruiting other trainers. What is your elevator pitch for a horseman not only to ship, but to send a string here?

JL: Our backstretch is extremely well run. We're a racetrack with integrity. It's a good place to be. We have three turf courses including the training track, a Tapeta course, and a dirt course, and they're great places to train. A great person to ask about this is Mark Casse, and one of Mark's answers will be that he loves training his 2-year-olds here. He thinks he can teach them, move them further along on that Tapeta surface, and get them going without the stress of deep dirt tracks and muddy tracks. He's convinced a number of his major owners of that fact, and now you'll notice a number of them buying Ontario-breds. A few of them have been doing it for a while, but he's taken on two or three new owners now that want Ontario-breds, and part of his selling point to them is that Woodbine is a great place to train.

Personally, I don't love shipping a horse. It's never easy, it's always got some risk involved or wear and tear on the horse. The nice thing about here is, you can come and hunker down here and run your horse for eight or nine months. You could still ship if you wanted to, but this is a great place, and the onus is on us to make sure we have good races. It's a pretty big selling point, I believe, to have 133 days of racing. I think we have a stable, bright future 

CC: To come full circle back to the Queen's Plate, Woodbine is very focused on branding the event as a multi-day festival, not just a single race. Talk about that decision and what's behind it.

JL: I don't think we're unlike other racetracks. As an industry, we struggle to compete for attention. You feel it a little less at a track like Keeneland, because of the nature of the meets and the culture—or as another example, I was in Japan last weekend, and they had 40,000 people there on an average day. In a lot of North American jurisdictions, the horse racing culture is no longer ingrained. A lot of people go to the racetrack because they went with their parents, and it's just not a part of our culture anymore—the way it was 30 or 40 years ago, when this grandstand was full.

So how do racetracks get that younger generation to come out? Everyone has concluded we need to give them an experience. They want to go out and do things and have fun, and we have to show them they can do that at our racetrack any time. Everyone's bringing in music, entertainment, food trucks, and we're doing the same thing, following that pattern as we try to compete for the sports and entertainment dollar, in particular with that generation that is really not going to come otherwise, because it's not ingrained in the culture the way it used to be.

Of course, the real challenge is getting them out next Saturday, or two Saturdays from now.



CC: Is that competition also made difficult by decreasing attention spans in general? 

JL: I think there are so many opportunities to consume in other ways. For instance, sports highlights are huge. The last 20 seconds of an NBA game, the greatest dunk of the night, everyone is watching those now. It's just a different consumption of sports and entertainment, and there are so many different choices of ways to watch movies, to consume sports. 

People are busy doing so many things, I think there aren't many sports that don't suffer. I think golf is in real trouble that way, I think tennis is in trouble that way in terms of replacing that demographic, I know football is struggling ... sports generally share this challenge, although the NBA has done an unbelievable job with their product. We met recently with the new head of sponsorship and partnerships from the NBA, and it's remarkable how they approach and analyze these things. I do think as a racetrack we're as positive-thinking and forward-thinking as anyone, at least in North America. I think we get it, it's just a case of executing on it, and this is a tough environment.