Could the horsemen lease the Meadowlands?

"I'll take the bet that we will be racing at the Meadowlands next year," says Leo McNamara, executive administrator of the Standardbred Breeders and Owners Association of New Jersey (SBOA/NJ), when asked for his reaction to a report which called for the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA) to lease the Meadowlands Racetrack to a horsemen's group or just shut it down.

 

"It's just not going to be that easy to close down the Meadowlands, and if the state steps away, I believe the (harness racing) industry will step up and run it, and we're working on making that happen," added McNamara in an interview with harnessracing.com.

 

McNamara said the SBOA/NJ had met with members of the Hanson commission and the NJSEA in advance of the announcement about the report, "so the $1 a year lease deal was not news to us. We didn't expect good news for racing. But our treatment in the report was surprising to us. There was no discussion of the racing industry's agri-business in New Jersey in the Hanson report. The Standardbred breeding industry in New Jersey is signficant, the Thoroughbred breeding industry almost non-existent, and yet the Hanson report just ignored that."

 

McNamara said meetings with state legislators are already scheduled to discuss the recommendations issued by the New Jersey Gaming, Sports and Entertainment Advisory Commission, which has been commonly referred to as the Hanson commission because it is chaired by Jon Hanson, a former CEO of the NJSEA.

 

As for the SBOA/NJ or some other Standardbred group leasing the Meadowlands, McNamara said thus far the SBOA/NJ has not seen the track's financials so it can research that possibility.

 

"Our preliminary information is they (NJSEA)  had $40 million in revenue from the Meadowlands last year and $51 million in expenses," said McNamara.

 

"We don't know how much of that expense might be NJSEA expense that really doesn't belong on the racetrack's books, but we do know that the expenses included $16.5 million in day labor and benefits for those workers--that's people who are not executives or don't make a salary, just the hourly wage workers," added McNamara. "If you took on managing the racetrack, you could walk away from those union contracts, but because New Jersey is a union state, you would need to renegotiate with the same groups.

 

"Also, the income figure doesn't include any OTB profits (which came close to $10 million in 2008). When we talked to the Hanson group, we told them we needed this, but then the NJSEA said it wanted to keep this, which would be gravy to them if they aren't running the racetrack."