By Perry Lefko
On Saturday and Sunday, Woodbine Entertainment Group will feature the first-ever two-day Queen's Plate festival to highlight the track's signature race, which this year will mark the 158th edition. The Queen's Plate is the longest, continuously run stakes in North America, but WEG is trying to create an even bigger festival around the Plate with a slate of stakes races and concert after each card. WEG is charging admission this year, ranging in price from $30-$350, to cover the costs incurred in doing this special event. WEG Chief Executive Officer Jim Lawson discussed the planning behind this year's event, adding a third Thoroughbred track in 2019, the possibility of attracting a major sponsor for the Plate, and the plan to add a full-scale casino and other building projects. Here is an edited transcript.
PL: What's the plan behind the idea of a two-day festival?
JL: In Toronto where we run 133 days of Thoroughbred racing, it's hard to get people day in, day out, so you start to look at how you allocate your marketing dollars. One of your objectives is to attract a new fan, which everyone in all sports and entertainment is chasing. Like many other racetracks, we have decided that our best opportunity is to create that event that is going to bring young people out. With the phenomena of Triple Crown races and the Pegasus race in Gulfstream in January, [the racing industry] has created an atmosphere that will bring out a crowd because it's a social event. It's about the food and beverage, the music, and that has proven to be a very successful formula at least in getting horse racing exposure. It's another challenge to get that same crowd back out the following weekend or next two weekends. Generally the industry hasn't solved that. The world of horse racing has clearly moved to events. They recognize that's the way they're going to get people out–the way they're going to attract a new fan and hopefully get them back either to wager, for the food and beverage or to invest in horses. That's the underlining premise of what we're doing and racetracks are doing it generally–and doing it quite successfully. We advanced our attendance last year to a record 37,063. The Queen's Plate is a growing event on the social calendar that this is something you want to do–get dressed up and go to the Queen's Plate. Part of that is the attraction of entertainment and music. We've been setting up tents and stages, and the real costs of doing all these festivals are setting up the infrastructure. Once you have set it up, you should take advantage of it by giving people access and entertaining people two days instead of one because the huge costs are those setup costs. That is part of the thinking: We've got this wonderful place, this wonderful environment, tents, stages, you name it, let's turn this into a two-day event rather than a one-day event. I think it will evolve. These things are always hard to get off the ground, but the growth that we've had and just the prominence on the Toronto social calendar, I think we're making great gains with the ultimate goal to get a whole new generation of fans saying, “This is a fun thing to do.”
PL: Is there any thinking of perhaps running the Canadian Oaks the day before the Plate instead of three weeks before, similar to the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby?
JL: It's a very good question and one we've debated at length the last couple of years. The prevailing view is we feel the Oaks is a very good entree race and makes the Plate more exciting and more interesting. It's still the Canadian Oaks; it's a great event on its own. What we've seen in the past, including this year with the Oaks winner and third-place finisher entered in the Plate, is it sets up that boys-versus-girls race. In retrospect, we did the right thing. The two-day possibility with the Oaks the day before is a possibility, but right now we've thought 'Isn't it great to have the champion of the girls going against the boys in the Queen's Plate?' That's what we have this year with Holy Helena (Ghostzapper) (the 3-1 favorite) and Inflexibility (Scat Daddy) (10-1). You'll see those fillies bet well because of the mere fact over half of our crowd is women and they'll be betting on the fillies.
PL: Any thought of adding a presenting sponsor to the Plate similar to the Woodbine Oaks presented by Budweiser?
JL: We are open to that sort of major sponsorship. Tradition is important. It will never be a title sponsor (in front of the Queen's Plate), but it could certainly be the Queen's Plate presented by a sponsor. We have more sponsors this year at the Queen's Plate than we've ever had–and this includes major companies coming on. It's exciting for us. We just have to continue to build the brand of the Queen's Plate. I envision the Queen's Plate will be the largest sporting event in Canada, if not this year then in coming years, and sponsors will come knocking and in large part because of the fan we're attracting. Our sponsors see that we've got 20,000 young people hanging out at a fashion show at Woodbine, and it's exactly the demographic they're after. Once we prove that over and over as we're about to do, we'll have the sponsors saying, “This fits with our demographic” and the value of our brand will go up.
PL: WEG has announced that the seven-eighths of a mile Standardbred track, which replaced the inner turf course when the major Toronto harness racing track closed in 1993, will be rebuilt into an inner turf course for the 2019 season. Is this a reflection of what Woodbine once was, a Thoroughbred plant built by E.P. Taylor that was later rebuilt to accommodate harness racing?
JL: That's not necessarily our direction in terms of why we're doing it. We're not necessarily trying to return it to the glory days or turn Woodbine into a Thoroughbred place. We're also investing $10 million in our Standardbred track (to be re-named Woodbine at Mohawk Park, and which will be the only WEG Standardbred track). The thinking in large part and we've seen this across North America with our customers, with breeding, with horses…the world has become so much more international. A lot of our growth and wagering is into Europe. The Queen's Plate will be wagered on in Britain, Ireland, Asia, Australia, South America and they love and expect grass racing. That's where our growth is. Woodbine has the world-famous mile and a half E.P. Taylor Turf Course that I think is the nicest one in North America with the sweeping, wide turns. We're adding the second turf course because we'd like to be known as the turf destination in North America. Our goal is to offer five or six turf races a day. We're going to offer $45 million in turf purses in 2019. With the horse supply shortage that faces North America, the key for us to attract horses is to say Woodbine is the home of the turf. In addition to increased wagering because of increased field sizes, we've proven analytically that our customers would rather bet more on turf apples to apples than they do on dirt of Tapeta. There's really good reason for us to do it from a business standpoint.
PL: Any thoughts of adding a new big race to further cement Woodbine as a thoroughbred destination beyond the Queens's Plate, the Ricoh Mile and the Pattison Canadian International?
JL: We have spent a lot of time thinking about it. It's a question of allocation of purse monies and economics. Sure we'd like to have another big race to attract horses, but it's a competitive world in terms of attracting the best horses. You have to get the right time on the calendar, and that in itself is tricky. You have to be careful. Before throwing out $1 million or more, you have to look at the schedule and say is there any way to get horses here. It's tough.
PL: From 1989-91, there was a sponsor for the Canadian Triple Crown and coincidentally it was swept all three years–With Approval, Izvestia and Dance Smartly. Any chance of revisiting that idea?
JL: We'd love to do that, but it's a case of baby steps and promoting the Triple Crown In the right way and creating recognizable brand value in that asset. The Queen's Plate is good starting point, but it's tricky because one of the races–the Prince of Wales S. at Fort Erie–we don't control (because it is owned and operated by a different company). So it's creating that brand value and it hasn't been created yet. We're looking at ways to promote it, but your ability to do that is directly tied to creating value in the asset. We could associate a name with it, but I'm not sure that does us any good unless someone is prepared to put the marketing and sponsorship dollars behind it. It's a good idea to give it that panache and it's up to us to create that value. Right now we're putting a lot of our marketing dollars and emphasis on promoting that first leg of the Triple Crown and building that brand into hopefully getting a sponsor. Maybe if we get a major sponsor for the Queen's Plate, that sponsor will say, “Why don't we do that whole thing for you?”
PL: There are also plans to build a full-scale casino for cards and gaming–currently there is a slots casino–when will that happen and what will be the impact?
JL: We're sitting on 680 acres of land and we've done a master plan. The catalyst for moving this all ahead is the gaming expansion. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation has announced that the gaming provider will be announced in August or early September and we're well along working concurrently with the OLG and the City of Toronto on plans for development of the casino. I think it will be reasonably fast-tracked and I hope by the end of 2018 there's a shovel in the ground and by 2019 or 2020 [the casino will open]. This is so important to Woodbine because it's a trigger for development by us. We've got an entertainment district that we're also planning and moving ahead. We wouldn't have the luxury of all of this moving ahead unless we had the gaming provider. With all these new customers–and we're estimating 10-12 million a year–it's going to give us a chance to expose a whole lot more people to horse racing. In the interim, there's lots of space within the Woodbine plant for the gaming expansion. We have 650,000 square feet. There are already 3,000 slot machines and there is room for expansion.
PL: Will any of the money generated from the expansion go back into purses?
JL: A large source of our funding will be from the gaming provider and we will no longer be working with the government in that regard because we'll have private contracts in place. That's really good news for us: we'll have a commercial contract in place to support a large part of our operating costs and our purses. I think to be the winning provider at the Woodbine site, someone is going to have come forward with an ambitious plan that creates jobs and integrates well with us–and that means operationally and in such a way it's seamless and that people do get the opportunity to be involved and exposed to horse racing. It's a win-win for us. It's a source of income, but also a chance for us to bring 10-12 million visitors to our site and give them a chance to see horse racing.
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