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North America vs. Paris Vincennes – The Product
North America vs. Paris Vincennes – The Product
On the weekend of February 6-7, 2010 we compared the betting product at four North American racetracks that offer what appears to be top quality racing with the Saturday-Sunday cards at Hippodrome Paris-Vincennes. There were several higher end events at various tracks such as the Aquarius Pace at the Meadowlands, Don Mills Trot Final at Woodbine, Bernard Goldstein Memorial Pace at Pompano and a major race at Vincennes on Sunday. Overall, we believe the cards to be somewhat consistent and void of what might consider a signature race of national prominence.
We elected to measure several elements that may be of importance to the bettor (excluding takeout) such as field size, odds of the betting favorite and percent of the betting favorites that actually win the race. As many know European trotting typically has larger fields, longer distance races and a variety of starting methods.
The results of our unscientific review on a single weekend were disparate but not surprising:
- Average field size of the 18 Paris-Vincennes races was 12.3 vs. 8.4 at the 73 North American races;
- Average lowest odds (favorites) at Paris-Vincennes was 3.2 to 1 versus 1.2 to 1 at the North American tracks;
- 30% of the North American track favorites went off at even money or less while none of the Paris-Vincennes favorites went off at less than even money;
- 39.7% of the North American favorites won vs. 50% of the Paris-Vincennes favorites;
- Average Paris-Vincennes purse in USD was $101,400 vs. $18,414 at the North American tracks
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