After last year’s Belmont Stakes, the biggest day for horse racing in the state, executives at the New York Racing Association realized they had a cash cow on their hands, if only they could tap into it.

For the third straight year, the Belmont played host in 2004 to the last leg of a Triple Crown bid. That produced the largest attendance – 120,139 – as well as the largest amount wagered in a single day – $14,461,402 – in Belmont Park history. On television, the only sports event to receive higher ratings was the Super Bowl.

Eager to cash in, NYRA, which runs Belmont Park, approached the company that organizes airtime for the three networks, Triple Crown Productions, to try to increase its share of the TV pie. Unable to come to a deal, NYRA signed with ABC for 40% more than what they had with NBC, according to NYRA spokesman Bill Nader. The deal will take effect in 2006.

With no Triple Crown contender this year, Saturday’s Belmont Stakes is unlikely to break any records. Indeed, NYRA is expecting a crowd of 75,000. But NYRA’s extra efforts to get money for the day of the Stakes reflects a growing need to find other ways to increase revenue and bring new faces to the sport, if not the track.

“The big days are getting bigger and the big events are getting bigger,” Nader said. “We get those people back for Saratoga, we just can’t get them back 250 days out of the year.”

Despite the record crowd that showed up to see Smarty Jones last year, average daily attendance continues to dwindle, from around 11,000 people in 1989 to 8,500 last year, even as the number of racing days per year has dropped from around 315 to 250.

The amount wagered at the track has also fallen. Most wagers now come from the Off Track Betting Corporation, televised horse races at other parks, and the Internet. In 1997, $1 billion of the $2.8 billion wagered on NYRA races came from out of state. Last year, that number was $1.75 billon out of $3.7 billion.

At the heart of what keeps gamblers away from the tracks is the role of so-called rebate shops. Unlike at Belmont Park, which takes between 14% and 17% of the wager as a fee, called the takeout, rebate shops give that money back to the gambler – whether they win or lose.

“That’s a significant amount of money when you’re betting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year,” said one professional handicapper, Alan Denkenson, who moved from his native Queens to Las Vegas 10 years ago.

NYRA discontinued business with 10 rebate shops in January when some of them were indicted for allegedly trying to fix a race. On May 27, NYRA announced it lost $300 million as a result, no small drop in the bucket – NYRA reigned in $2.7 billion in total revenue last year.

Nader said the takeouts at NYRA racetracks are the lowest in the country, but gamblers complain that it’s nonetheless more profitable to do business with rebate shops – or better yet, bet on football.

The problem of getting people to the tracks can be self-fulfilling. Back in 1973, when Denkenson was a regular at Belmont, there were “fewer degenerates per mile” at the track. “There were more people who like the game and happy to be there and not people who were ripping up their ticket and looking like they couldn’t pay for their next meal,” he said.

Today, on most days, the track can be a foreboding place for a family. To change this, NYRA has created family days that offer such amenities as pony rides for a dollar. The result has been a delicate balance between getting families to come to the park without completely sanitizing the average gambler.

“Gamblers are much more essential to the sport than the families,” said Nan Mooney, the author of a memoir about horse racing, “My Racing Heart.” “But you need to increase your audience or else horse racing will fall off the map entirely.”

To do that, the NYRA officials are counting on the Stakes to attract larger audiences – both at the track and on television. They’ve also raised ticket prices to $10 from $2 while tapping into another revenue source by forbidding fans from bringing beer into the park during the Stakes.

Denkenson, who hasn’t been to the Stakes since he was one of 67,605 people who witnessed Secretariat win the Triple Crown in 1973, doesn’t plan on returning this year. Not that his love for the sport has diminished: Denkenson still wagers about $200,000 on horses every year.

“I’m a fan, but I’d rather be a fan watching MTV,” he said.