HBPA Panel on Fixed Odds: Future of Wagering

HOT SPRINGS, Ark.–Dave Basler sees betting on table tennis in Asia and envisions it being replaced with horse racing in America's burgeoning sports books.

“We can fill that void a lot of times during the day so that they don't have to play table tennis from China or cricket from Australia–things that people have no idea about,” Basler, the executive director of the Ohio HBPA, said Thursday during a morning session of the National HBPA Conference at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort. “That's not just attractive to sports books, that's attractive to horsemen and racetracks for the opportunity to increase our revenue.”

Eric Hamelback, CEO of the National Horsemen's Benevolent & Protective Association, at the 2018 conference cautioned horsemen that sports wagering was coming and the racing industry needed to be prepared. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Supreme Court struct down the ban on sports wagering. Thirty states now have passed such legislation, including Arkansas.

Now, he says the U.S. racing industry must turn its attention to implementing fixed odds. That's a divergence from the pari-mutuel industry that currently is the linchpin of American horse racing, while sports betting is based on fixed odds that allow players to lock into a price in advance of an event.

“It's here, it's on us,” Hamelback said. “Now we need to really move and pivot and focus on how to deal with it.”

The panel also included Louisiana HBPA executive director Ed Fenasci. Sports betting began in Louisiana last fall, with an online component starting in January. Basler's home state of Ohio is scheduled to start sports wagering Jan. 1, 2023 after passing the enabling legislation in December.

“Pari-mutuel wagering is not going to be in the sports books,” Basler said. “Fixed-odds wagering will be. So we need to take advantage of that ability to bring in customers and get our product in front of millions and millions of potential new fans.”

Fenasci said sports books have the ability to be more creative than pari-mutuel wagering, including with parlay bets.

“Who knows what is going to become the popular wager, right?” he said. “Two grays will win today at the Fair Grounds. This trainer is going to win a race and this jockey will win two races. You can marry a hockey game with the fifth race at the Fair Grounds and marry that to maybe a college football game betting on LSU.

“This is the future of horse-race wagering in the United States. Not this year, five years from now. This model of sports book wagering has competed very well with other forms of gaming. The parimutuel model has been eroding over the last 30 years. It's not standing the test of time when other forms of gaming come in and capture the attention of the customer base.”

Fenasci said the apps for betting online with sports books is “the type of interaction that is going to appeal to 20- and 30-year olds…We want shelf space on these new e-commerce sites. We want horse racing to be there prominently displayed for people who may not have had the opportunity in the past to consume that product.”

Basler said fixed odds could make “an unbettable race now a bettable race.”

“There's a graded-stakes race with six horses and a 3-5 shot in there,” he said. “There's a good chance the bookmaker will take the 3-5 shot out of the pool entirely and price everybody else as if that horse weren't in the race. There are a lot of things that we don't have the ability in parimutuel pools that fixed odds can offer and perhaps enhance our product.”

Former Ladbrokes executive Richard Ames is CEO of British-based Sports Information Services and president of its U.S. subsidiary SIS Content Services Inc., both of which provide content and production services to the betting industry. He said Australian racing went from being overwhelmingly parimutuel to a decade later seeing “probably 55, 60 percent” of wagering through fixed odds.

“We know consumers like the idea if they place a bet at 6-1, that's what they're going to get,” he said.

Panel moderator Michele Fischer, an industry consultant who spent years working for the tote-betting company Sportech Racing and now serves as vice president of SIS' American operation, said some horsemen are surprised to hear that U.S. races already are being distributed in overseas sports books. While the Stronach Group-owned GWS is the largest exporter of U.S. content, she said SIS is the world's largest horse-racing content distributor in the world. It is fairly new to the American market, however.

SIS currently distributes on a 24-hour cycle more than 30,000 horse races and 38,000 greyhound races a year at 118 tracks in 16 countries.

“The sports book wants to have a volume of content,” Ames said. “They want to have access to thousands of races.”

He said there are different models on how racetracks and horsemen are compensated for having their races in sports books, including a fixed fee, revenue-sharing or getting a percentage of betting proceeds.

“Why should we consider this?” Fischer asked rhetorically. “Horse racing had a fabulous year in terms of handle in 2021, the highest it had been since 2009. In some states, we have a false comfort. Purses are very high–you look at Kentucky with HHR (historical horse racing) booming there. It's doing well in Virginia. But when you look at the big picture across the United States, the simple answer is horse racing is not self-sufficient. We're using alternative gaming to support our purses.

“This is an opportunity to become more self-sufficient, because we're betting on horse racing–not betting on a VLT machine or HHR machine.”

   Rees is a horse-racing communications specialist in the horse-racing industry, including working for the National and Kentucky HBPA.

 

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Ohio HBPA Donates To New Vocations

New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program announced that it has received a $75,000 donation from the Ohio Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association. The donation will help support aftercare efforts at the New Vocations facility in Medina, Ohio, which focuses on rehabbing, retraining and rehoming Thoroughbred racehorses retiring from racetracks in the state.

“Making sure our horses have a good home after retiring from racing is vital to the Ohio HBPA,” said Ohio HBPA Executive Director Dave Basler. “Continuing to support New Vocations is an easy decision given their 30-year track record of successfully retraining and rehoming our Ohio horses. ”

Added New Vocations' Thoroughbred Program Director Anna Ford: “We are so thankful for the continued generosity and support from the Ohio HBPA. Even in the face of rising boarding and horse care costs and a pandemic, which resulted in challenging times for everyone, the Ohio HBPA's support has helped us offer uninterrupted aftercare services to horses coming off the track and ready to find their next career.”

New Vocations was founded in 1992 in Laura, Ohio.

“We'll always have a special place in our hearts for the Ohio horsemen who helped us get our start,” Ford said. “We're honored that they still entrust us with their horses' transition to new lives and new careers.”

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Loose Wiring Blamed For ‘After the Bell’ Betting at Thistledown

Dislodged wiring within the United Tote Company circuitry at Thistledown resulted in betting pools remaining open for nearly a minute into a one-mile race on Tuesday. Wagering had to be manually stopped once the error was discovered mid-race, and the race was eventually declared a “no contest” for pari-mutuel purposes.

Based on pool totals shown on the Thistledown post-race video feed, this meant refunds of $82,191 in wagers for the sixth race Aug. 17.

It is unclear how much of that money was bet “after the bell.”

A lack of communication seems to have compounded the confusion, with horseplayers taking to the Internet to vent frustration and wonder what happened in the immediate aftermath of the no-contest decision, which led to a 57-minute gap until the next Thistledown race was run. The Equibase chart described it only as a “tote malfunction.”

Bill Crawford, the executive director of the Ohio State Racing Commission, did not reply to a TDN voicemail message seeking an explanation prior to Wednesday's deadline for this story.

It was up to Dave Basler, who is not a regulator, but the executive director for the Ohio Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association, to first explain what happened via social media.

“Apparently, the tote system was not locked until 54 seconds after the horses broke from the gate…. Just wanted to pass along what information I do have now, as my phone has been ringing nonstop with questions,” Basler wrote in a post. He noted that purses were paid out for the race.

Later on Wednesday, Patrick Ellsworth, the director of racing at Thistledown, told Horse Racing Nation (HRN) that the betting was left open for 52 seconds, and that the cause was wiring that had come undone.

That HRN story stated that (as is typical at many North American tracks), betting is locked by stewards via a button pressed in the judges stand as soon as the race goes off. At the same time, another button is pressed in the tote room as a backup.

“The cables that had been determined to be dislodged have been replaced, tested,” Ellsworth told HRN. “We don't anticipate this being a problem going forward, but extremely unfortunate.”

The sixth race Tuesday was an Ohio-bred MSW won by Little Bita Smoke (Paddy O'Prado). The 4-year-old gelding was 0-for-10 going into the race and was listed as the second choice in the morning line behind a favored pari-mutuel coupling.

Just prior to the gates opening, Little Bita Smoke was 2-1 on the track's video feed, with the entry bet down to 3-5 odds.

Little Bita Smoke veered sharply outward at the break of the one-mile race, then gunned to a contending position on the turn and seized the lead onto the backstretch.

One clue that something might have been pari-mutuelly amiss was that no running order and odds were listed at the bottom of the track's video feed, which is customary at Thistledown.

As the field hit the far turn, the running order briefly flashed on the broadcast feed. With a tenuous lead and three furlongs left in the race, Little Bita Smoke had plunged in price to 4-5, while the entrymates were bearing down in second and third at rising 6-5 odds.

Although Little Bita Smoke eventually swatted away the advances of the entrymates and was drawing clear by 2 1/2 lengths approaching the finish, the gelding gave his would-be backers a scare by jumping tire tracks left by the starting gate just prior to the wire. The track was listed as “fast” on the chart, but rain during the race had quickly turned the track wet

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Belterra Park, Ohio HBPA End Impasse, Simulcasting Set To Resume Under New Three-Year Contract

Officials with Belterra Park and the Ohio Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association have agreed to a three-year contract that will result in the resumption of simulcasting from the Cincinnati, Ohio, racetrack as early as Tuesday.

The simulcast signal was shut off earlier this month after horsemen – who have been involved in protracted contract talks with Belterra – opted not to renew an export approval agreement that expired at the end of August.

With no simulcasting or advance deposit wagering and extremely limited on-site betting, handle at Belterra plunged. The first seven cards of September have averaged just $29,229 in pari-mutuel wagers compared to $874,261 on the final live program in August.

“Our board has approved a new contract with Belterra that we are in the process of finalizing today,” said Dave Basler, executive director of the Ohio HBPA. “I expect approval by this (Monday) evening and the signal should be back up tomorrow.”

Basler said the two sides have been operating off a contract from the old River Downs racetrack dating back to the 1990s that preceded both casino wagering in Ohio and the replacement of River Downs by Belterra. Changes of ownership of the racetrack casino – now part of Boyd Gaming – complicated the process, Basler said.

“The percentage (from casino revenue) paid to horsemen was set by the racing commission via resolution, but how that was distributed was being done without agreement,” said Basler, who said the amount in question was $9 million annually. “The process really bogged down the last couple months and we we thought it might drag on for the next couple months.”

Basler said the contract and export approval both run through December 2023.

The 2019 meet at Belterra Park ends Oct. 9 and racing is scheduled to resume in April 2020.

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