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FanDuel Announces $1 Million Fantasy Contest Tied To Breeders’ Cup Mile

The Breeders' Cup, one of Thoroughbred racing's most prestigious international events, today announced a $1 million fantasy contest in collaboration with FanDuel Group, the premier gaming destination in the United States and the official wagering partner of the Breeders' Cup World Championships. Titled the Breeders' Cup $1 Mil Perfect Finish Free Play, the new fantasy contest gives fans the chance to win $1 million by accurately predicting the finishing order of one of the weekend's highly renowned races: the FanDuel Breeders' Cup Mile presented by the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund.

The contest, live now on FanDuel.com and open until 3:15 PM ET on Saturday, Nov. 7, tasks players to slot each of the field's competing horses into a finishing position of 1 through 14. Fans should tune-in to NBC on Saturday, Nov. 7 starting at 2:30 PM ET to watch the race live and view the results in real time. Entrants will collect points for each horse whose placement they correctly predicted. $20,000 in cash prizes will be awarded to the top 3,100 participants on the leaderboard. If anyone can correctly predict the finishing order of all 14 horses in the FanDuel Breeders' Cup Mile, they will win or share the $1 Million prize.

“As anticipation builds for the upcoming Breeders' Cup World Championships, we are excited to offer daily fantasy players and racing enthusiasts a free way to have a real stake in the action this weekend,” said Justin McDonald, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Breeders' Cup. “We thank our partners at FanDuel for their support and commitment to creating this fun and interactive contest.”

“FanDuel has been offering free daily fantasy contests to our customers around horse racing's marquee events and we are capping off a successful year with a special $1 million free to play contest to celebrate TVG and FanDuel's partnership with the Breeders' Cup,” said Matt King, CEO of FanDuel Group. “FanDuel Group is committed to growing the sport and fantasy contests for horse racing are a great way to bring new fans to horse racing's premier event.”

FanDuel Group, which includes the TVG and FanDuel brands, was first introduced as an official partner of the Breeders' Cup in 2019. This year, two of FanDuel Group's major charity partners will be incorporated into the naming rights for their sponsored races, officially designating the races as the FanDuel Breeders' Cup Mile presented by PDJF and the TVG Breeders' Cup Juvenile presented by Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance.

The 37th running of the Breeders' Cup World Championships is scheduled to take place on Friday, November 6 and Saturday, November 7, 2020 at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky. The event will be broadcast live on NBC, NBCSN, NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app, as well as on BreedersCup.com and the Official Breeders' Cup mobile app. To learn more about this year's event, please visit BreedersCup.com/2020.

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Betfair to Pull Plug on NJ Betting Exchange

Beginning Oct. 1, Betfair will no longer accept exchange wagers from its New Jersey customers, ending a brief and unsuccessful experiment in the U.S. for a form of wagering that couldn’t overcome a number of obstacles that stood in its way of success.

Founded in 2000, Betfair introduced exchange wagering in the U.K., where it proved to be wildly popular. A betting exchange is a marketplace where customers set their own odds on a horse. If someone accepts those odds, the bets are matched. This also allows customers to act as bookmakers and wager that a horse will lose. Customers could also bet on the outcome of races while they were being run.

Twenty years later, Betfair has over one million customers worldwide.

Sensing that the U.S. could become a large and important market, Betfair worked with Darby Development, the operator of Monmouth Park, to change existing laws. The exchange, the first of its kind in the U.S., debuted May of 2016. In addition to Monmouth, a handful of other tracks were soon made available to Betfair customers in New Jersey.

But U.S. horseplayers never embraced the concept like their peers in the U.K. and other countries did. According to the New Jersey Racing Commission’s annual report, the exchange handled $12,371,257 in 2018. More up-to-date handle numbers were not available.

“When we launched in 2016, we felt like exchange wagering, popular elsewhere, was worth trying in New Jersey to see if it could increase new fan interest in racing,” said Kip Levin, the COO of FanDuel Group, now the parent company of Betfair. “For a variety of reasons, including a customer base used to exotic wagers and a reluctance by major US racing associations to embrace the different business model, it never hit the critical mass needed for it to be viable.”

Had Betfair been able to secure rights to accept bets on more U.S. tracks, perhaps the story would have ended differently. While able to line up several second-tier tracks, Betfair was unable to broker agreements to take bets from U.S. customers from NYRA, The Stronach Group, Churchill Downs, Del Mar and Keeneland.

“I still think the exchange is a good product that could have been successful if we were able to get signals from the major jurisdictions,” said Darby Development Chairman and CEO Dennis Drazin. “We had all the ‘B’ tracks but we didn’t have New York, California, Kentucky, Florida. I think the exchange would have been very successful if we could have gotten those tracks. Betfair tried very hard to make progress to get those signals but were just unable to do so.”

But even higher quality signals like Monmouth and Woodbine failed to attract a sizeable amount of wagers. That could have been the result of the takeout structure. One of the reasons behind Betfair’s success in the U.K. was that it charged commissions far lower than the traditional takeout. For most U.K. bettors, the commission was just 5%.

Betfair was able to charge that little because it was not required to turn over any of its profits to purses. Had it tried to do the same in the U.S. it would have had a difficult time getting tracks and horsemen’s groups to sign off on the product. Agreeing to pay U.S. tracks, Betfair charged its New Jersey customers a 12% commission.

Another factor was Betfair’s inability to expand outside New Jersey. Exchange wagering was also legalized in California, but was never made available in that state or any other state outside of New Jersey, seriously limiting Betfair’s ability to expand its customer base in the U.S.

The post Betfair to Pull Plug on NJ Betting Exchange appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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FanDuel Named Title Sponsor Of Breeders’ Cup Mile, Includes Charity Partners In Race Names

Officials of Breeders' Cup and FanDuel Group today announced that FanDuel, America's premier gaming destination, will become the title sponsor of the $2 million Breeders' Cup Mile (G1) at this year's Breeders' Cup World Championships. In addition, two of FanDuel Group's major charity partners will be incorporated into its naming rights for this year's event — the FanDuel Breeders' Cup Mile presented by PDJF and the TVG Breeders' Cup Juvenile presented by Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance.

The Breeders' Cup, one of Thoroughbred racing's most prestigious international events, consisting of 14 races and purses and awards totaling $35 million, is scheduled to be held on Nov. 6-7 at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky. The World Championships will be televised live on NBC and NBCSN.

For several years, FanDuel subsidiary TVG, America's Horse Racing network, has partnered with the Jockeys' Guild's Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund (PDJF), on initiatives including an annual telethon, and with the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, to raise awareness and funding for both organizations.

“We are excited that FanDuel will become the title sponsor of the Breeders' Cup Mile and thank them for their commitment to the World Championships,” said Breeders' Cup President and CEO Drew Fleming. “Since announcing our multi-year agreement last year, we have enjoyed an outstanding relationship with FanDuel and TVG as they have expanded and strengthened their support of the Breeders' Cup and Thoroughbred racing.”

“Building off an amazing start last year, FanDuel and TVG are looking forward to this year's Breeders' Cup and to working together to create new fans for horse racing,” said Kip Levin, CEO of TVG. “We appreciate Breeders' Cup's and NBC Sports' cooperation in including our charity partners into the race names for this year. Both the PDJF and Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance do so much to help provide care and resources for our athletes and we wanted to share the spotlight with them on two of our sport's biggest days.”

In 2019, Breeders' Cup and FanDuel announced a comprehensive multi-year sponsorship agreement making TVG and FanDuel the official Wagering Partners of the Breeders' Cup World Championships. TVG will retain its title sponsorship of the $2 million Breeders' Cup Juvenile (G1), which also was announced last year.

The collaboration also established TVG and FanDuel official partner status for four of its business units: Advanced-Deposit Wagering (TVG) as well as sports betting, daily fantasy sports and online casino, all of which operate under the FanDuel brand.

TVG and FanDuel will continue to receive official sponsor designation, commercial units and other promotional rights as part of NBC Sports' coverage of the Breeders' Cup World Championships and also will be the Presenting Partner of NBCSN's “Betting the Breeders' Cup” show, which will air multiple times during Breeders' Cup week and include complete handicapping and analysis of the World Championships. In another component of the partnership, FanDuel Group will promote the Breeders' Cup World Championships to its databases of Daily Fantasy and sports betting customers.

In January, FanDuel introduced FanDuel Racing, an advanced-deposit wagering service aimed at novice race fans, and began promoting it across its DFS platform. Prior to that, FanDuel had developed and introduced daily fantasy sports applications for horse racing.

The $2 million FanDuel Breeders' Cup Mile presented by PDJF is a Grade 1 race for 3-year-olds and older, which will be run at 1 mile on the Keeneland turf course on Saturday, Nov. 7. The Mile annually draws top flight international competition. This year, horses from South Africa, France, Great Britain, Japan and the U.S. already have qualified automatically for the FanDuel Breeders' Cup Mile by winning races in the Breeders' Cup Challenge Series.

The $2 million TVG Breeders' Cup Juvenile presented by Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance is a Grade 1 race for 2-year-olds, which will be run at 1 1/16 miles on the Keeneland main track as part of Breeders' Cup's Future Stars Friday program.

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