Bangor Raceway finally makes a small profit

For the first time in recent memory, Bangor Raceway’s recently concluded extended harness race meet has turned a profit, maybe small, but a profit.

After privately operating the city-owned racing facility for three years, Fred Nichols, general manager of Bangor Historic Park, lessee of Bangor Raceway, said Thursday, “This year’s meet went a lot better than our previous 41-day meet. We will be back racing in 1997, and when we apply for next year’s racing dates in October, we will add a couple of dates. The final decision, of course, will be up to the board of directors, but that’s what I will recommend for next year. The bottom line for 1996 will be black and we will show a profit.”

The turnaround in the Bangor racing operation is closer to a miracle than just an accomplishment. The Bangor facility has registered negative numbers for more than a decade, with deficit figures for harness racing topping the $150,000 mark in taxpayer money.

The city of Bangor will share in the good news in the form of a rental fee, plus repairs from an on-going maintenance program that was negotiated as part of the five-year lease agreement.

The success of the 1996 Bangor race meet is even more significant when you consider that for the 26 days of the extended race meet, it rained on 20.

“It was quite discouraging,” Nichols said. “The best weather day of the year was the first day, June 2. After that, it was rain for 10 days, not drizzle, but driving rain, before we saw any sunshine. Then it was back to rain again.”

Nichols said the early part of the race meet was better than the previous year. “On opening day, we had 145 entries in the declaration box to race. The horse supply was tight at times, but we didn’t have to go any double dashes and there was only one night that we had to go an eight-race card,” Nichols said.

Next year, Nichols said the opening weekend would probably be a two-day opener, as opposed to the one-day opener this season.

Nichols attributes a number of factors to the success of this year’s race meet. “Our purses were good,” he said, “and a controversy over the horsemen’s contract in southern Maine seemed to swell our horse supply. Also, free admission worked very well, plus the participation of Canadian horsemen. I can’t overstress that.”

Nichols said he doesn’t have his tracking of contest entries complete, “but from the Fourth of July on, you could see the increased numbers in the grandstand. There were a lot of first-timers and that is just who we were targeting, someone who hasn’t been to the races at Bass Park before.”

Will the stockholders receive any return on their investment this year? No one will have to dig down in the pockets, according to Nichols. He was non-committal in answering the question, saying, “Well, we stemmed the losses this year and that’s their benefit this time around,” he said.

Did they make a profit this year? “The answer is yes,” Nichols said. “How much? I don’t know whether it’s a thousand bucks or more. There is no way of telling until the stipend monies come in from the state.” The stipend monies are an increasingly larger component of any racetrack’s income statement, according to Nichols.

“That OTB stipend, could have a $1,000,000 in the pool this year. The purse supplement is up considerably, but you won’t know about the OTB money until Septemter, and then the state will have to project figures for the last quarter,” Nichols said.

Overall, Nichols says he is pretty pleased with the results this year.

“We averaged $42,000 on-track in live handle each race night, plus a $12,000 average from OTB. Our on-track daily handle average was up more than 10 percent,” according to Nichols, “but the total dollars were not because of fewer days raced this year. We also cut our overhead drastically this year.”

Nichols said in the past, a $42,000 handle would be a certain bankruptcy, but today, with the added stipend money from racing and OTB, his break-even figure is “around $40,000.” The break-even figure for Bangor Raceway in the past was about $70,000 nightly.

Figures released by the Maine State Harness Racing Commission indicate that in 1995, for 41 racing days (including fall racing), Bangor Raceway handled $1,672,024 of which $453,012 was generated by OTBs in Maine. In 1996, for 26 race days, Bangor’s handle was $1,094,251 with $289,415 wagered in Maine’s OTB parlors. Although the figures seem to contradict the profit margin, Bangor receives more stipend money this year than last and also a negotiated fee from Miller’s Restaurant.

During the 26-day race meet, Nichols served not only as general manager, but special promotions person on the microphone every night and race secretary during the day. Will he be race secretary next year?

“I hope we made enough money that we can hire a race secretary next year,” he said. “There was just no time for me.”

PACING BITS – Extended meet racing continues tonight and Saturday at 7 p.m. at Skowhegan Raceway before moving to Topsham Fair on Sunday. County Raceway continues its extended meet racing tonight at Presque Isle at 7:30 p.m. Next week, Topsham and Northern Maine Fair at Presque Isle share the Maine Sire Stakes. All divisions of the 2-year-old MSBS divisions are raced at Topsham on Monday, Aug. 5 and the 3-year-old MSBS divisions head for Northern Maine Fair with the filly pacers and the trotting divisions scheduled on Thursday, Aug. 8 and the colt pacers on Friday, Aug. 9.