C'mon Tim, you're better than that. The admission is going up because O.A.R is playing. You could have at least mentioned that.

If I'm a local horseplayer having plans to go down to Belmont on Friday afternoon after work (which I'm not) and could care less about an O.A.R. concert, am I really going to shell out $30 to catch the second half of the Belmont card? At that point, NYRA has either lost my handle for the day entirely, or I play through NYRA Rewards/head over to Aqueduct.

NYRA should make a killing with the concert, but the important question is: how many of those coming for the concert are going to get turned onto horse racing? I would guess very few. I'm guessing that NYRA will report admission figures for that day, and that those figures will include the walk-ups just for the concert. It's tough to get an accurate per capita wagering metric on the day since on-track handle constitutes (please correct me if I'm wrong) Belmont Park, the simulcast at Aqueduct, and NYRA Rewards wagers, but I would bet that a handle over attendance count would actually be lower than a normal on-track day since the concert will inflate attendance.

I believe on-track handle is from money wagered by the warm bodies at the track that's running the races whether it's off a NYRA Rewards card in a machine or via cash. Everything else is from "elsewheres". But maybe I'm wrong. The secretive NYRA won't even release attendance figures anymore.