South Korea is opening its fourth racecourse today — a KRW185.7 billion, roughly $130 million, facility where the horses commute to work.

For the inaugural meeting at Let’s Run Park Yeongcheon on 13 September, the Korea Racing Authority is putting into operation a model never previously used in the country. Rather than establishing a separate population of racehorses at the new venue, horses remain based at Let’s Run Park Busan-Gyeongnam and travel to Yeongcheon for racing before returning afterwards.

KRA calls it a regional circuit racing system. Yeongcheon is scheduled to hold 12 race days and 72 races through 6 December, incorporated into a wider Yeongnam programme shared with Busan-Gyeongnam.

That makes today’s opening a more interesting experiment than simply adding another racecourse to the map.

The transport model has already been rehearsed. Test races were held at Yeongcheon ahead of the public opening to check not only the track itself, but the movement of horses and personnel, stabling, race operations and the systems required to run a meeting away from their permanent base.

Today, that rehearsal becomes part of the operating model.

KRA has built a substantial permanent asset: two tracks, stables and a grandstand for around 5,000 spectators on a 660,000-square-metre site. The first phase alone cost KRW185.7 billion, while the wider development has been budgeted at KRW305.7 billion.

Yet one of the most valuable ingredients needed to produce the racing will arrive from somewhere else.

It means Yeongcheon is testing whether racing infrastructure and racing resources actually need to live in the same place. Instead of immediately duplicating the ecosystem already established at Busan-Gyeongnam, KRA can use the same horse population across two venues.

That may reduce what needs to be permanently replicated at Yeongcheon, but it creates different costs of its own: transport, additional coordination and the practical challenge of convincing owners, trainers, jockeys and stable staff to participate in racing away from their home track.

Building the venue was the expensive part. Keeping it supplied with competitive racing is a different problem.

For the local government, however, the attraction is much bigger than the race programme.

Yeongcheon was selected for Korea’s fourth racecourse in 2009, turning today’s opening into the result of a development process stretching across more than 15 years.

North Gyeongsang Province and Yeongcheon also made an unusual bet to secure it: KRA was promised a 50% reduction in leisure tax for 30 years.

The logic is that half of a large new tax base can still be worth considerably more than the revenue generated without a racecourse at all. Provincial estimates suggest the 72 races scheduled before the end of this year alone could generate around KRW10.8 billion to KRW14 billion in leisure-tax revenue after the reduction.

And the hoped-for return does not stop at betting taxes.

Local plans have linked the project to transport improvements, development around the surrounding area, tourism and a broader horse-industry economy. The original KRW305.7 billion vision also leaves roughly KRW120 billion beyond the first racing-focused phase for further leisure development.

That turns Yeongcheon into a fairly unusual economic experiment.

South Korea has spent $130 million creating a new destination for racing without first creating a new population of racehorses to live there. Instead, KRA is trying to share the expensive sporting assets it already has while Yeongcheon builds the economic ecosystem around them.

The inaugural programme begins today, including an 1,800-metre opening commemorative race with ten horses registered.

For spectators arriving today, Yeongcheon is a brand-new racecourse.

For the horses, it is a business trip.

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East Asia Reports
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Author — Adrià Mas Rodríguez