The news out of Fort Erie is very bad. Nordic Gaming, the well-heeled company that has been running the racetrack there announced yesterday that there will not be racing at the border oval for 2009. The track has lost on average about $4 million a year in each of the last four years and it appears Nordic has little interest in losing several million more.
As part of yesterday’s announcement, 190 employees were advised that they would be terminated as of March 31, 2009.
There is a very slender thread of hope. Nordic has applied to the Ontario Racing Commission for racing dates in 2009, but that’s more of a formality. The provincial government is unlikely to extend to horse racing the kind of bailout the car industry is counting on.
The problems of the fort are multi-fold. The introduction of the slots several years ago was a nice boost to the cash flow, but in recent years, the slots have bee underperforming; the fact that smoking has been banned in Ontario casinos has contributed to that, so has the Casino on the American side. The weakened Canadian dollar and the present state of the world’s economy is no help either.
In this age of satellite wagering, Fort Erie’s buffet of mostly low-claiming races is not especially appealing to the bettors.
For the past couple of years, the Fort has elected not to race on saturdays, preferring the Monday and Tuesday slots when many of the larger tracks aren’t in action.
Today on the Fort Erie web site, we are advised that “The 2009 live racing schedule will be available when the 2009 season is finalized.”
Today, the word ‘finalized’ takes on a different meaning for Fort Erie racetrack which has been in operation for 116 years.
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