BC’s $191 million thoroughbred horse-racing sector is reeling from what insiders say is ill-timed speculation from Great Canadian Gaming Corp. (GCG) that it might close its Hastings Park Racetrack in September 2012, when its lease with the City of Vancouver expires.
“This has created a lot of uncertainty in the industry, a lot of uncertainty among breeders particularly,” said Ole Nielsen, who is president of the BC Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association (BCTOBA).
“We’re in the throes of the breeding season right now. If we don’t get mares bred, they won’t have foals next year. If they don’t have foals next year, we won’t have the horses to put on the track in three years.”
Nielsen, who is one of B.C.’s 220 breeders, owns an operation that produces 100 foals a year from clients’ mares. As one of the province’s 1,500 thoroughbred horse owners, he races 20 horses at Hastings Park.
“We’re doing our best as an organization to say, ‘Let’s all hang together one more year for the good of the industry,’” he said. “Let’s hope this sorts itself out and that cooler heads prevail.”
GCG spokesman Howard Blank spurred uncertainty about Hastings Park’s future on March 17, after his company’s conference call to discuss its 2010 fiscal year.
GCG’s revenue from all operations rose less than 1% to $383.5 million in 2010, but the company swung from earning a $24.6 million profit in 2009 to losing $21.9 million in 2010.
“Is there a chance that Hastings won’t exist? Yes, there’s a chance, but that’s not something that we’re pushing,” Blank told Business in Vancouver.
“We have to communicate to our shareholders all the options out there.”
Blank said his company is negotiating with the Vancouver to renew the lease and that the city wants his company to spend millions of dollars on a parkade, a renovated back stretch and other upgrades.
But City of Vancouver spokeswoman Wendy Stewart told BIV March 23 that the city has not started negotiations with GCG and won’t until later in the year.
Nielson believes Blank’s comments strengthen GCG’s negotiating hand with the city but make for bad public relations that could hurt the industry in the long term.
A BCTOBA report in October noted that Hastings Park’s purses in 2010 were too low and that, unless the company provided a “substantial increase,” horse owners and breeders would either get out of the business or move to another jurisdiction.
Hastings Park plans to boost purse sizes in 2011 by a mere 2%: to $10 million from $9.8 million in 2010.
According to BCTOBA, thoroughbred owners and breeders have made $342 million in capital investments in their livelihoods.
B.C.’s breeding sector, however, has been declining for years.
The province had 1,400 mares that produced 573 foals in 2000. BCTOBA estimates that last year B.C. had 650 mares that produced 207 foals.
Hastings Park’s 2011 season is set to open April 16 and is scheduled to have the same 71 days of racing as it had last year.