BetMakers Launches Fixed Odds Mobile App

MonmouthBets, the first legal and regulated mobile application for fixed odds betting on horse racing in the United States, has launched announced BetMakers Technology Group Friday. Approved by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, the MonmouthBets app is now available for New Jersey residents to accept wagers on mobile devices ahead of Monmouth Park's 78th season beginning Saturday, May 13.

In addition to being able to place bets on Monmouth Park races, New Jersey horseplayers can now place fixed odds wagers on races from Tampa Bay Downs, Canterbury Park, Delaware Park, Hawthorne Race Course, Emerald Downs, and Century Mile.

“With last year's retail offering setting the foundation, we are excited and honored to bring fixed odds betting to horseplayers through our MonmouthBets digital platforms,” said BetMakers CEO Jake Henson. “Fixed odds betting will help to form a healthy betting ecosystem for horse racing in New Jersey and beyond, with the transformative potential to provide a massive benefit to the entire racing industry.”

The post BetMakers Launches Fixed Odds Mobile App appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

The Week in Review: Handle Falls Sharply Again in February… What’s Going On?

Figures released last week by Equibase showed that U.S. handle declined by 5.21% in February. This comes after handle declined by 7.19% in January. For the year, that's a drop off of 6.22% and, if those numbers hold up throughout the year, total handle will be off by $750 million and the year-over-year percentage decline will be the worst the sport has suffered since 2010.

And it's not just that racing has gotten off to a slow, reversible start this year when it comes to wagering. Whatever is going on, it started in October. Handle was up 2.68% in September and up 1.78% through the third quarter of 2022. Then the numbers took off in another direction and they haven't stopped falling since. Handle was off 4.93% in October, 4.47% in November and 7.52% in December.

Taking a look at the usual factors that affect handle doesn't yield any obvious answers. The average field size so far this year has been 7.66 horses per race, almost identical to the 2022 number, which was 7.67. The total number of races run has actually gone up, from 4,345 to 4,508. But the average amount wagered per racing day is off 8.35%.

This is a mystery not easily solved, but the best guess is that it has something to do with the amount being bet by the Computer Assisted Wagering (CAW) players who received huge rebates from betting outlets like Elite Turf Club, which caters to the biggest bettors in the world. Had something happened to impact the amount they wager that would explain the recent declines?

Maury Wolff, who was a professional horseplayer before retiring and studies betting trends, speculated that some tracks may have raised the host fees they charge Elite and other ADWs. The signal fee is the percentage of every dollar of handle that an ADW or simulcast outlet must pay the host track for the right to wager on that track's races. If host fees go up, the rebates the ADW can offer its players will likely have to drop. A smaller rebate would lead to a CAW player betting less. Information on how much is bet at places like Elite and how much they pay in host fees is a carefully guarded secret.

“There is a possible explanation, but you'll never get to the bottom of it,” Wolff said. “What are racetracks doing when it comes to signal fees? An unreal amount of the total amount bet is driven by Elite and if there have been changes to signal fees, that would reduce handle at Elite. Have signal fees gone up to the shops, and when you are talking about the shops you are talking about Elite? I would be very suspicious of that. They are so much the driver now. Anything that affects them is going to be an earthquake to the business. That strikes me as a possibility.”

But Wolff admitted that his theory amounts to only an educated guess.

“But these are suspicions and suspicions are not facts,” he said.

What's the answer? We're not sure. Neither were a handful of other experts I consulted. But this is something to keep an eye on. One of the good news stories in racing over the last few years is that handle has more than held its own and done so despite the advent of legalized sports betting outside of Nevada. Handle was up by 11.8% in 2021 and, despite the decline over the last three months, down less than 1% in 2022. It looks like that's not going to be the case in 2023, which is off to an inauspicious start.

Why You Should Bet on Hawthorne

It's not easy being Hawthorne Race Course. Though a casino is on its way, as of now, they get no additional funding from slots, etc., and offer purses that are far lower than those found at the top-tier tracks. Because they are obligated to run a harness meet, Hawthorne can offer only a 68-day Thoroughbred meet that ends Sept. 3. Illinois racing misses Arlington Park.

But you can't say that Hawthorne isn't trying. Hoping to attract more business at the current meet, which began Mar. 5, the takeout on win, place and show bets has been slashed to 12%. When it comes to straight wagers, there's no better deal in the sport.

“You have to be aggressive with takeout sometimes,” said Hawthorne Racing Analyst Jim Miller. “Minor drops are always welcome, but we wanted to be really aggressive. Our takeout in the past on these wagers was 17%, so to drop five percentage points to 12% is very significant. We wanted to make a splash and we want to put out a product that people will want to bet on. We want people to focus on our races. We know handle will have to increase to cover what we are losing in commissions with the lower takeout, but in first couple of days of racing we have seen that handle has increased and we are hopeful we will have a very good year.”

Hawthorne is also thinking out of the box when it comes to its racing schedule. They will not race on Saturdays in March, April or May, going with a two-day week that includes racing only on Thursdays and Sundays.

“What we're doing is smart,” Miller said. “Here's a great example. Normally, our opening day would have been last Saturday. That happened to be the same day that you had three major racetracks with Derby preps and three or four other stakes on the card. These are great circuits that people want to watch. You want to see what's going on at Aqueduct, Gulfstream, Santa Anita. We knew that if we threw our card out on that day, we wouldn't handle anymore than $600,000. By shifting that card to Thursday, we handled $1.2 million and that's because there's not as much competition and there is more exposure. We want to put our product out there where the gamblers can see it and see all that we have to offer and see that we are offering a 12% takeout on win, place and show wagers.”

For good reason, horseplayers love to complain about how high the takeout is in racing. The best way to fight back is to support tracks like Hawthorne when they go out of their way to offer the customer a better deal.

Tapit Trice Did Just Fine in the Tampa Bay Derby

Perhaps you were expecting Tapit Trice (Tapit) to win the GII Tampa Bay Derby in a cakewalk. The expectations were high for the grey 3-year-old and they should have been. By Tapit, trained by Todd Pletcher and a $1.3-million yearling purchase at Keeneland September, he forced his way into the conversation for the GI Kentucky Derby with an impressive eight-length win in an allowance race at Gulfstream. He was sent off at 1-2 in the Tampa Bay Derby for a reason, because he looked much better than everyone else on paper.

But nothing came easily for Tapit Trice in his two-length win. He was 11th of 12 down the backstretch and looked beaten when he was still ninth on the far turn and was being hard ridden by Luis Saez. But he kept grinding away and managed to draw clear in the final sixteenth. His Beyer figure, an 88, was nothing to get excited about.

Was his Tampa Bay Derby performance good enough to win the Derby? No. But that doesn't mean he can't win the Derby. At Tampa, he ran like a horse who is still figuring things out. There's one more race to go, the GI Toyota Blue Grass S., and eight weeks to go before he'll get into the starting gate for the Derby for the Hall of Famer Pletcher. Look for a better, more focused horse next time. He should be fine.

The weekend also included a big win by GI Kentucky Oaks winner Secret Oath (Arrogate) in the GII Azeri S. at Oaklawn. Beating a quality filly in Clairiere (Curlin) by 2 3/4 lengths, she couldn't have looked better. It was her first win since the Oaks.

Before the race, trainer Wayne Lukas said his goal for the year was to win an Eclipse Award with Secret Oath. With Nest (Curlin), last year's 3-year-old filly champion, back for another year, that won't be easy. But Secret Oath could not have gotten the year off to a better start.

The post The Week in Review: Handle Falls Sharply Again in February… What’s Going On? appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Cautious Optimism in Illinois Racing

Illinois racing has its problems. There's no more Arlington Park, there will be only 64 days of racing this year and the circuit will shut down in the middle of the summer. But with the 2022 season about to start Saturday at Hawthorne, officials at that track are predicting that navigating through this year will be challenging but not impossible.

“How are we going to do? I can tell you more Wednesday when we draw the first card,” said Racing Secretary Al Plever. “But I think were going to be OK.”

The Hawthorne spring meet consists of 34 days and runs through June 25. When Arlington was running, racing would shift there in the summer before returning to Hawthorne in the fall. That gave horsemen a seven-month racing season that consisted of 118 days last year. But Hawthorne won't be running a summer meet because it must also host two harness racing meets each year. That means that there will be no Thoroughbred racing in the Chicago area for the bulk of the summer, from June 26 until a 30-day fall meet begins Sept. 23.

The fear was that the gap in the summer would lead to an exodus out of Illinois, with horsemen choosing a circuit where there were more racing opportunities and they wouldn't have to pack their bags in the summer.

“At the end of June, we're all going to have to leave,” said trainer Mike Campbell, the former president of the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association. “The problem we are all facing having to leave our homes. I will not live in my home here for more than four months a year. That's a problem. Everybody is in same boat.”

But Plever said only a handful of Illinois regulars have left and that stalwarts like Larry Rivelli, who will have 80 horses at Hawthorne, have remained loyal. Most have found a place to call home during the summer. The best fit appears to be Canterbury Park. The Minnesota track will have 65 days of live  racing, beginning May 18 and ending Sept. 17. In an effort to attract Chicago horsemen, Canterbury has put together a bonus package for Illinois-based horses. A thoroughbred starter that raced in Illinois in 2021 or 2022 but has not previously started at Canterbury will be eligible for a $1,000 bonus in their first start of the 2022 season.

“It will be a little different this year because people used to be able to stay here pretty much all year and now we have a couple of months where they are in limbo,” said Hawthorne Assistant General Manager John Walsh. “They can go to Canterbury, which is a great track that has turf racing When they're done there they can come back in the fall and I think we will also have some sort of bonus program for horses coming in from Canterbury. I haven't heard of too many people who are staying away.”

Campbell said he will spend the summer at Colonial Downs and knows of other trainers who will be doing to Indiana Grand, Prairie Meadows and the Ohio racetracks.

One of the reasons horsemen are committing to Hawthorne is that a sizable purse increase will be ushered in this year. At about $120,000 a day in 2021, Hawthorne had among the smallest purses in the sport. This year, the simulcasting money bet off-season in Illinois does not have to shared with Arlington and the horsemen have also secured a one-year subsidy from the state. Plever said purses will average about $190,000 a day this year with purses for maiden special weight races increasing from $22,000 to $40,000.

Walsh also believes a later start–Hawthorne typically opened about a month earlier–will help.

“We might get off to a bit of a slow start but I think that by May we will be 40 to 50 percent better off than we have been at some of the past spring meets,” Walsh said. “We're going to have more turf racing. Weather-wise, we're sure to have some decent days in May and June. When you're running in March and April there can be rain or even snow and you're hard pressed to even get on the turf course. I think we will do much, much better and the signal will look better with some green grass instead of everything being just gray.”

But there will be challenges. Thoroughbreds used to be able to train at Hawthorne when it was shut down in the winter, but, because of the harness meet, which didn't end until March 20, that wasn't possible. With the track not opening for training until Monday, five days before opening day, there will be a number of horses who aren't yet ready to go. Plever said that of Monday there were 400 horses on the grounds and he expected another 200 to 300 would arrive by Saturday. That may not seem like a lot, but Hawthorne, throughout April, will race just two days a week, on Saturdays and Sundays.

In the longer term, Hawthorne should be just fine. A casino is in the works and the added money should yield a generous hike in purses. There is also the hope that a new harness track will be built somewhere in Illinois, which would mean that Hawthorne could go back to running Thoroughbreds only.

“This meet, it is the start of something,” Walsh said. “Once the casino opens up that will really energize things. We have a time line now. In time, these purses here are going to go through the roof.”

The post Cautious Optimism in Illinois Racing appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Hawthorne Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Violations Of Biometric Privacy Act

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Hawthorne Race Course in Stickney, Ill. alleging track management has violated the state's Biometric Privacy Act (BIPA), reports the Cook County Record.

According to the complaint, Hawthorne's security system uses facial recognition scans to help keep out “unwanted visitors.”

The problem, per the complaint, is that Hawthorne allegedly failed to provide notice or obtain consent before the scans were conducted and shared with a security company for comparison against a database. That is a violation of BIPA, which allows plaintiffs to be awarded damages of $1,000 to $5,000 per individual violation.

Based on attendance figures obtained by the Cook County Record, Hawthorne's potential liability in the case could exceed $200 million.

Read more at the Cook County Record.

The post Hawthorne Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Violations Of Biometric Privacy Act appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

Verified by MonsterInsights