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Spectacular failure of Preakness is a blow to Baltimore pride
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I am going to have to make this post brief. I will have more to say about all this in the coming days. The damage to the local economy that Maryland Jockey Club chief operations officer Tom Chuckas caused on Saturday may never be able to be properly measured. The money that was lost because he alienated at least 35,000 loyal Preakness customers is gone forever and citizens of Baltimore will have to struggle to make it up some other way. Here is Tom's email address: tom.Chuckas@magnaent.com.
I was informed that right outside of Philadelphia on I-95 there is a billboard advertising Preakness. One can only imagine how much money was wasted on marketing this spectacular failure.
A few people are trying to say that because the Preakness handle was higher than last year that everything is OK. Click on this link and read about how 2008 was in fact the anomaly. The 2009 handle is down from 2007. I could care less about the handle though. This travesty devastated the local economy that revolved around the Preakness. An event that used to generate revenue for all classes of people in Baltimore was reduced to a joke because of one corporations greed and ignorance. I am worried that the corporation set this situation up so they could have an excuse to move the Preakness out of its rightful home and further devastate our economy.
Here are my Preakness predictions from February. Don't believe the Preakness organizers that say this debacle could not have been predicted.
Read some opinions about Saturday's Preakness humiliation here and here.
Preakness 2008 attendance =112,222
Preakness 2009 attendance =77,850
