Richard,

Happy New Year and I hope you enjoyed your recent Vegas trip.

I read an article this morning where as many as 18 states are looking to get into the bookmaking business. Legalizing sports betting in that many venues involving several race tracks in the mix will be an unmitigated disaster of epic proportions. It will do absolutely nothing for racing and any income created would be mere crumbs.

Have we learned nothing from the mass of casino’s that open, siphon off money from existing casino’s putting them out of business and the deck is continually shuffling the same dollars to the newest place de jour? Video crack was going to save the racing industry. How many Genting customers go next door to Aqueduct to ever bet a race? The NYRA races cannot be found on a tv in any of the casino bars. Finger Lakes got video crack to save it. Paisan Cuomo opens a full fledged casino a stones throw away killing their VLT business, so the new casino as well as the HBPA are subsidizing the operation to maintain purse levels. Oh YEAH, so it doesn’t hurt too much will cut racing days and NYS will guarantee Delaware North the Finger Lakes casino operator tax breaks to protect their income level to what it was before the competing casino opened.

BRILLIANT: So we have a race track that cannot even come close to being self sustaining, a casino operator being subsidized by NYS, a new casino being held up by the state to subsidize a race track and now we can add sports betting......
I’ve owned a few businesses in my day and never had CHARITY as a business plan.

Granted this is NY but do you think the running contest between Illinois & Louisiana as to who can put more of their governors in jail will be a more transparent operation? Politicians will do what they do best, line the pockets of their cronies and themselves while robbing Peter to pay Paul. After all they will be out of office, in jail or not they will get their pensions and the cleaning up of their mess will be someone else’s problem.

Monmouth may be the possible short term exception to the rule as they have had an operational plan in place for several years. Christie threw racing under the bus there and dangled the sports betting carrot to the industry as its savior if it ever came? If it is indeed successful, worry not the next game of political football with a new administration will raid it in the name of education.

The pie is simply not big enough for the state to license, tax & take a revenue cut, the host track take their cut and for the bookmaker be it William Hill or whomever to turn a profit. The standard 11/10 vigorish on sports bets will not stand that many cooks in the kitchen. So what will they do? Raise the vig to 12/10 on parlays for sure,maybe 11.5 on straight bets, mess with money line payoffs etc.... Remember NYC OTB? The only bookie that ever lost money! They were guaranteed a 5-6% profit on every dollar they took in. How many of us would jump at a guaranteed return like that! No risk, 100’s of millions of dollars coming in just by unlocking the front door.

A bit off the contest topic but in the same vein that contests, give aways, gimmicks, slot machines or football betting will not do ANYTHING to “MAKE RACING GREAT AGAIN” FORGET ABOUT IT. Any business other than government that cannot be self sufficient is doing the dinosaur 🦕 walk.

Our beloved game has done nothing but self inflict wound after wound for the past 40 years. There will be no enhancing of the next generation of horse players guest experience because there is no next generation of horse players nor will there be. I’ll even define horseplayer in the most basic of terms as someone who will wager on horses & buy a racing form at least 10 times per year with one Wednesday in that number. Attend one live racing program once per year other than a big Saturday.

Frank D.