Column: Super horse event will be super pricey

This is not where the turf meets the serf.

But what the heck. Who says we can’t have another Super Bowl here?

We can, you know — when the players have four legs and strong little athletes are sitting on their backs and betting on them is perfectly legal and rich people own them and prices are high.

The Breeders’ Cup is coming to Del Mar on Nov. 3 and 4, and in every way it is the Super Bowl of its sport, the one of kings. And one fit for royalty pocketbooks.

It is a terrific event, and this will be the first one, long awaited, at Del Mar. I’ve covered two of them at Santa Anita. The best horses, jockeys and trainers in the world meet for very large purses. But it is not for the working stiff, the faint of funds.

This is not your normal two days of horse racing at Del Mar. Opening day or the Pacific Classic can’t touch this. You can get a seat, but, like the Super Bowl, it’s going to be a rich ticket. Or you can pay a rather small price and loiter.

The following information was sent to me confidentially by a friend, a Turf Club regular, who, although hardly destitute, won’t be purchasing his usual table for the event.

A two-day package to the Turf Club costs $1,728 per seat, which includes meals. But you cannot go it alone. You are required to buy a table for four. Stretch-run grandstand box seats are going for $1,003 a copy, and you can choose either a four- or six-seat box. Yes, you must purchase the entire box. (More detailed ticket information is scheduled to be announced next week, and non-box seats certainly will be cheaper, although not cheap.)

So, in its own way, the Breeders’ Cup is very much like the Super Bowl. If you want to go, there’s a way, an expensive way. If you don’t, event lovers — not just Americans, but worldwide event lovers — are standing in line.

Like the NFL’s signature extravaganza, the Breeders’ Cup has been a corporate event, not for the proletariat. But it’s our first one, so I just wanted to let you know that, if you were planning to attend, not even your first born could serve as payment.

And you should also know that, while the track plays host to the event, it, too, is like a Super Bowl stadium. NFL people set prices and run Super Bowls. Breeders’ Cup people put up $28 million in purses, so they set prices and run Breeders’ Cups.

“There are no free seats,” chuckles Joe Harper, Del Mar’s president and CEO. “And, yes, they are expensive, as they have been at all the other venues that have staged the Breeders’ Cup. It is the Super Bowl, everything rolled into one.”

Harper’s role is to provide the Cup people everything they need to stage a successful event. In this, he is a bystander, an innocent one. A grandson of legendary Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille, he knows a few things about the grand stage.

“The Breeders’ Cup takes over the track,” Harper says. “We provide the license to conduct racing on those days, and all the operational people will be ours. But we will be working for the Breeders’ Cup.”

Harper can do nothing about prices, but he knows there will be no shortage of purchasers.

“When you look at the cross section of past attendance at these things, there is a much higher percentage of out-of-town people who attend, people from all over the world,” he says. “There will be contingents from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates. You get a little different breed of cat at a Breeders’ Cup. There’s a higher end of clientele.”

But if you really, really want to go and still send your kids to college, you can. Just put on a comfortable pair of shoes.

“There is a walk-around ticket,” Harper says. “The Breeders’ Cup really isn’t pricing the little guy out of it, I guess, if you just want to come out. I think that one is $50 a day, or so, down on the first floor. Getting into the infield is like $35. So, we do have a lower value — if you don’t want to sit with the owners, trainers and swells.

“There is a whole lot of racing, so there are a whole lot of owners and owners’ friends, so the high-end areas fill up. There aren’t many normal seats. The good thing is we have a lot of high-end areas at Del Mar, and not all tracks have them.”

Before Del Mar could get the Cup, Harper had to expand the turf course. Once he did that, it seemed like the sell to Breeders’ Cup suits wasn’t all that difficult — after educating the bid takers.

“We’re hoping to make it a frequent stop; it brings in a whole lot of people who only see racing in Europe or back east,” he says. “Many trainers never have been to Del Mar. A whole lot of people didn’t even know exactly where Del Mar was.

“But when I informed them there were 30,000 hotel rooms within 15 minutes of the track, they perked up. There’s going to be a lot of enthusiasm for the Breeders’ Cup in a good-sized city you don’t see in New York or Los Angeles.”

Will it sell out?

“Tickets go on sale March 6,” Harper says. “It will sell out by early April.”

A great event. It’s just that most of us won’t be able to take it sitting down.

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