Business Booms on Pace Night

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Meadowlands Pace night on Saturday was certainly one of the best Grand Circuit stakes cards of the season and business at the windows was right in line with the quality of the performances on the racetrack.

The Meadowlands enjoyed the highest handle on its biggest night of the season since 2006, when the Pace card saw a total of $5,672,535 wagered on the evening’s fourteen races. Remarkably, Saturday’s handle was the second largest of any track that raced the entire day, exceeded by only Saratoga Thoroughbreds.

The $5.6 million wagered represents a 20 percent increase over a year ago, when all sources handle totaled $4,733,390.

While stakes racing historically yields a very high percentage of winning favorites, the opposite was true on Saturday with only three favorites converting. Nine of the fourteen races on the card were stakes and while the average win mutuel for the entire card was $20, win prices on the stakes alone were north of $26.

An added bonus to the live television coverage from 10-midnight on Fox Sports 1 was a special “Cross Country” Pick 5 uniting Standardbred and Thoroughbred races in a common wager that included races 9 and 10 from Saratoga flats and races 10, 11 &12 from The Meadowlands. That wager returned $25,092 for a 50 cent bet.