Purses are higher, the stable area is near capacity, and Friday’s opening day drew more than 100 entrants for 10 races.
There are early indications Del Mar will launch its popular summer meeting with a strong three-day weekend.
The famous track, adjacent to the Pacific Ocean north of San Diego, could do with a successful start after two summers of declines in all-sources handle.
Last year, handle at the summer meeting exceeded $502.9 million, down from more than $527.6 million in 2023. The 2022 meeting had a handle of $579.8 million.
The racing calendar this summer may help reverse that trend. The 2024 summer meeting began on a Saturday, with track officials stating at the time they wanted an extra day to prepare the property following the closure of the San Diego County Fair 13 days earlier. This year, there is a 12-day gap between the closure of the fair on July 6 and the opening of the race meeting.
“There’s no question that returning to the opening Friday will give us a significant boost,” Mike Ernst, the track’s executive vice president for finance, said earlier this week.
Del Mar’s summer meeting is the most popular of the year in California. The business figures of the meeting are closely scrutinized as a barometer of the health of racing on the West Coast.
This year, overnight purses have been increased by approximately 8 percent compared to 2024 and are closer to what was offered in 2022 and 2023. Del Mar cut purses for three consecutive meetings from the fall of 2023 to the fall of 2024 because of declines in handle.
Del Mar was not alone. In recent years, purses were reduced at Los Alamitos and Santa Anita, the other two tracks in Southern California that run Thoroughbred meetings.
The trend was reversed earlier this year, partially because of the demise of racing in Northern California. Revenue from simulcasting and account-wagering sources from that region was redirected to Southern California tracks and purse accounts.
Boosted by simulcast revenue from throughout the state, Santa Anita and Los Alamitos offered higher purses earlier this year. Both tracks also had higher handle figures this year than during corresponding seasons in 2024, a trend racing officials hope will continue at Del Mar.
Del Mar is still paying for declines in handle in recent years, however. The track begins the summer meeting with a debt of “a little over a million dollars” in its purse account, Ernst said.
Ernst said simulcast revenue from Northern California, and a solid summer meeting, will help reduce the debt.
No racing is currently scheduled in Northern California. Golden Gate Fields closed in June 2024. A replacement meeting at Pleasanton last fall failed to meet business expectations, leading to the cancellation of a proposed winter-spring meeting earlier this year. Proposals for brief meetings at county fair locations this summer and fall were repeatedly rejected earlier this year by the California Horse Racing Board.
Some stables based in Northern California have relocated to Southern California this year and will be active this summer.
The Del Mar season includes 31 days of racing through Sept. 7. The meeting will largely be held on a Thursday-through-Sunday basis, with racing on Labor Day, Sept. 1. There will be no racing on Thursday, Sept. 4, leaving the final weekend with a three-day schedule from Sept. 5-7.
The biggest day, in terms of attendance, will be Friday’s opening day, which will have an ontrack audience limited to the “mid-23,000s,” Ernst said.
The days of packing in as many customers as possible on opening day are long gone. Opening days earlier this century routinely exceeded 40,000, a figure that made traversing the grandstands and clubhouse difficult for those seeking food or drinks, a trip to the bathroom, or to a betting window.
The summer season includes 38 stakes, led by the Grade 1, $1 million Pacific Classic at 1 1/4 miles for 3-year-olds and older on Aug. 30. The richest race this weekend is Saturday’s Grade 2 San Clemente Handicap, a $200,000 race for 3-year-old fillies at a mile on turf.
The Pacific Classic is the lone seven-figure race of the meeting and part of a bumper program with five stakes. The winner of the Pacific Classic receives a fees-paid berth to the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Nov. 1 at Del Mar.
Del Mar will host the Breeders’ Cup for the second consecutive year, and for the fourth time in its history, this fall, on Oct. 31-Nov. 1. The 2025 Breeders’ Cup will be the last in California in the short-term future. The event will be held at Keeneland and Belmont Park in 2026 and 2027.
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