Santa Anita Park starts its 90th year with the largest opening day crowd in 8 years

The largest opening day crowd in eight years marked the beginning of Santa Anita Park’s 90th year on Thursday, bringing together horseplayers from around the world to wager on the races, resulting in a total all-sources mutuel handle of over $21.4 million. This handle represented the third-highest in the track’s history for an opening day and reflects a 17.4 percent increase from last year, making it the fourth time in the past seven years that the opening day handle exceeded $20 million million.

The attendance of 41,562 on track marked the largest crowd on opening day, excluding weekends and holidays, since 1990. This year also marked Santa Anita's 11th Thursday opening, traditionally occurring the day after Christmas.

Santa Anita Park first opened on Christmas Day, 1934, less than 12 months after the newly formed California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) granted the Los Angeles Turf Club a permit to build the racetrack, with the condition that it would be operational by the year's end. Since 1949, Santa Anita’s opening day has been December 26th, with few exceptions. The season runs through mid-June.