What's your bare minimum Horse Racing could offer and you'd still be a fan/player?
Nothing else I can think of is a year-round activity for most of us, not football, not baseball, not skiing or boating, not golf, not basketball, not hockey, nuthin. Any of those would get boring if we tried following it all year long, even poker, no?
As a SoCal kinda guy, I'd be perfectly happy if there was just the Santa Anita winter meeting starting the day after Christmas and running for 5 or 6 months, then a couple of months at Del Mar in the summer and I'd be a happy camper and looking forward to next year.
Of course I understand the importance of the National racing scene, so I suppose it's a good idea to have meets open that center around the Triple Crown and some 4th quarter 2YO racing to serve as preps. And of course there should be a meeting that culminates with the Breeders Cup at a venue everybody approves of.
But other than that, frankly my dear I don't give a dam.
Cheap cheap claimers would not be on the program anywhere!
National minimum should be about $10K.
No state should have more than 250 racing dates ever no matter how many tracks there are.
And further, I predict that racing would be MUCH better off with a schedule something like this minimized recommendation, what say you?