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Originally Posted by randallscott35
100 years? So let's make up for lost time....why is the Post Office a failure? And Amtrak? Racing can survive but it will look different.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NTamm1215
What NYRA gets is not a subsidy. The land on which Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga sit was given to the state in exchange.
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Nick is absolutely right here, I used the wrong term. It is not a subsidy and NYRA in particular paid dearly in this deal with the theft of their land which, let's be honest, the State took for purposes that are not in the best interest of the horse racing industry.
Comparing racing to the Post Office or Amtrak is absolutely ridiculous, in fact, it only highlights what happens when the government gets their hands on an industry and ultimately destroys it. In NY in particular, the State is the single most contributor to the model that has left NY horse racing not profitable.
Going back to the early 1970's and the decline of the model that made NY racing successful, the first big dent was OTB. I know there will be those who will blame NYRA for this since they had the opportunity to run it initially, but it is a choice that NYRA, Roosevelt, Yonkers, etc. should not have had to make. The only reason OTB's were put in place in NY was so the State could get a bigger cut of the money. Then when the State ran the OTB's they did so in a manner which had no interest in the racing industry but only suited the State, bigger cuts for the State and patronage and destroyed the racetracks' ability to remain profitable.
Any business whose model starts getting turned upside down by having more and more taken away from it will ultimately get to a point where there are too many hands in the cookie jar taking too much money from the business that it can no longer sustain a profitable model. It is the same reason that pushing higher and higher taxes on business ultimately becomes counterproductive because you put too many of them into a corner where they can no longer make a profit.
NYRA has been dealt the most ridiculous cards over the last 40 years that remaining profitable is impossible due to State interference. And I don't want to hear the decline in attendance BS.
Randall, your reasoning is not logical. You want to ignore how the government has put the racetracks in position to have an unprofitable model. Instead, you just want to say regardless of how we got here, the racetracks are responsible for getting out of a hole dug for them by someone else by themselves. Or as you say, lets chain a 1,000 pound weight on horse racing's legs and tell the industry sink or swim.
