Here's why. Although a comparison on a monthly basis has value, the timeframe is too short to get a good feel for any trends, positive or negative. Even publicly traded corporations tend to focus on annual and quarterly comparisons. We can do that here by looking at the year to date 2012 vs 2011 numbers.
2012 vs 2011:
All Sources Wagering - +2.29%
US Purses - +8.39%
US Race Days - +1.81%
OK, so all positive, right? Indeed. But remember we need to take inflation into account. Let's do that so we can figure out if in constant dollars, wagering is increasing. Why is that important? Well, wagering is the revenue that customers (horseplayers) bring to the business. No wagering, no need for racing...
What is inflation so far this year? 2.23% You can see historical inflation data here. So, in constant dollar terms, wagering has stayed flat. So, is this really bad news? From 2003 to 2011, real handle has dropped 37% according to a McKinsey study published last year. Flat handle actually can be considered good news. Let's agree to that for now.
The question is at what price do we purchase that wagering handle? You do that via purses and race days. Taking inflation into account, purses increased just over 6% in real terms year over year. Race days (with their overhead) also increased by 65. So it took the industry an additional 65 race days of overhead as well as 6% greater cost in terms of purses ($57,852,060) to keep wagering revenue flat. In terms of overall industry profit, it appears that the US racing industry actually is LESS PROFITABLE than it was for the same period last year as it cost more money to generate essentially the same amount of sales (wagers).
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