Keeneland in Lexington, Ky., has always been a little different than other racetracks – mostly in a good way. It’s a for-profit company that has what its management has called a “non-profit mission.” Unlike publicly traded or privately held for-profit companies, there are no dividends paid to shareholders. Instead, over the many decades, Keeneland has earmarked a significant part of its profits from Thoroughbred auctions or racing for industry initiatives with an emphasis on the welfare of the horse and safety for riders. Keeneland has also reinvested in its facilities and for many years supplemented purses with commission on annual horse sales, whose gross revenue hit $100 million for the first time in 1978, $500 million in 1998 and reached a new high in 2025 with a record $836 million in sales receipts.
For many years, Keeneland’s advertising mantra was “racing as it was meant to be.” The track’s YouTube page has a video with that title focusing on its founding and its early days. The video concludes with the narrator saying: “Keeneland’s co-founder and first president, Hal Price Headley, summarized their intentions best, with: ‘We want a place where those who love horses can come and picnic with us and thrill to the sport of the Bluegrass. We are not running a race plant to hear the click of the mutuel machines. We want them to come out here to enjoy God’s sunshine, fresh air, and to watch horses race.’”
Somewhere along the line, the clicking of the pari-mutuel machines became a lot more important. So did the bells and whistles of the Historical Horse Racing machines Keeneland now operates in partnership with other Kentucky racetracks. Those HHR machines have helped make Keeneland and the year-round Kentucky racing circuit the envy of other states…