Parx launched its newest wager on May 10. Since then the jackpot had been building over the last 15 race cards, averaging a daily payout of $4,100.00.

The Philly Big Five is a 50-cent wager which requires players to correctly pick the winners of the last five races on the Parx racing card. Multiple winners are possible each day and split 70 percent of the net pool. The remaining 30 percent of the net pool goes to the carryover jackpot which accumulates until there is a single ticket winner.

The winning horses Monday were:

Race 6 # 3 Cobble Road $28.00
Race 7 #2X I Say I Play $40.20
Race 8 #4 Dr. Devera's Way $7.60
Race 9 #3 Glamorous Thunder $6.60
Race 10 #3 James Ciro $71.80

The Philly Big 5 encompasses the last five races each live racing day at Parx.

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The multitude of jackpot style wagers offered by racetracks across North America is a frequent talking point for horseplayers. NYRA's Empire 6 is no exception.

Informed horse players are sensitive to takeout. With that in mind, NYRA established a daily mandatory payout of the Empire 6 at Aqueduct Racetrack in January as part of a pilot program to further understand the benefits of the wager for both the track and player. The daily mandatory payout was recently extended through February with the pilot project expanded by offering the Empire 6 as a retail-only wager.

The Empire 6 was launched on August 7, 2019, replacing the traditional $2 Pick 6. With a $0.20 minimum and 20 percent takeout, the Empire 6 included a jackpot provision in which the full pool would be paid out only to a single ticket selecting the first-place finisher in all six races, otherwise 75 percent of the day's net pool would be distributed to those who selected the first-place finisher in the greatest number of races with the remainder added into a jackpot and carried to the next day's Empire 6.

At the time of the Empire 6 launch, the jackpot-style wager was successful at racetracks around the country and fractional base wagers were increasing in popularity. By lowering the minimum base, it would open the wager to a demographic that may have been priced out by the prohibitive cost of coverage in a $2 Pick 6. Fast forward to December 31, 2020 and the average daily handle on the Empire 6 was up almost 100% over the traditional $2 Pick 6.

The largest Empire 6 mandatory payout pool was on August 9, 2020 with $6,140,421 in new money, as a result of an 18-day carryover period that started with the first day of the Saratoga meet that grew the jackpot to $1,393,463 into the mandatory day. Several other mandatory force out days at Saratoga topped the $5 million mark.

The jackpot feature is a double-edged sword in that tracks receive a significant amount of new money wagered into the Empire 6 pool on the mandatory payout day, but it also keeps money out of circulation that could be wagered into other pools on the days leading up to the force out. NYRA has experimented with different mandatory force-out schedules ranging from over a month to every other week.

In addition, we also looked at forcing out the pool on marquee days versus regular days. On marquee days there are more eyes on the product and more people playing so the multiplier should be significant, but it does raise the concern of what effect the jackpot wager has on NYRA's other pools.

Tying up several million dollars for six races that likely include major stakes will certainly impact the pools, but will players be more likely to bet those races in different pools having handicapped them already? Or, should NYRA shift the mandatory payout to a nondescript Sunday in hope of doubling that day's handle? These are the types of questions we ask ourselves when formulating a schedule.

The Empire 6 experiment for the month of January proved to be successful.

Total handle on the Empire 6 was $1,942,010 for 18 race dates in January compared to $1,361,819 over 17 race dates in January 2020, an increase of $580,192 or 43 percent. Some of this increase was driven by the additional race day, but the daily average handle was up 35 percent.

Thus far, the pilot program has demonstrated that bettors at the Aqueduct winter meet will support a daily mandatory payout of the Empire 6.

For more information on the Empire 6, visit www.nyrabets.com.

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The Empire 6 will start with Race 5 [1:30 p.m. Eastern post time] for Saturday's 10-race card, with the sequence encompassing three graded stakes, including the Grade 3, $100,000 Go for Wand in Race 6 and the two concluding races with the Grade 2, $150,000 Demoiselle for juvenile fillies in Race 9 and the Grade 1, $250,000 Cigar Mile for 3-year-olds and up in the finale.

The Empire 6 requires the bettor to select the first-place finisher of the final six races of the day's card. On non-mandatory payout days, if one unique ticket exists, then 100 percent of the net pool, plus the jackpot carryover if applicable, will be paid to the winner. If there is no unique wager selecting the first-place finisher in all six races, then 75 percent of the day's net pool will be distributed to those who selected the first-place finisher in the greatest number of races. The remainder will be added into the jackpot and carried to the next day's Empire 6.

The Big A fall meet will conclude on Sunday, December 6 with a stakes-laden card that offers a pair of rich New York Stallion Stakes Series races, including the Great White Way for 2-year-olds and the Fifth Avenue for juvenile fillies, with purses of $250,000 each. Also featured on Closing Day is the $100,000 Garland of Roses at six furlongs for fillies and mares 3-years-old and up.

Live racing action will then continue with the 56-day Aqueduct winter meet which kicks off Thursday, Dec. 10 and runs through Sunday, March 28, offering 42 stakes races worth $4.57 million in purses.

For more information, please visit NYRABets.com.

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Live coverage of all the races in the sequence will be available with America's Day at the Races on FOX Sports and MSG+. Free Equibase-provided past performances will be available for races that are part of the America's Day at the Races broadcast and can be accessed at https://www.nyra.com/belmont/racing/tv-schedule.

Sunday's live racing program at Belmont, which closes out the 27-day Belmont fall meet, will be highlighted by two stakes races, each with an $80,000 purse: the Chelsey Flower at 1 1/16 miles for 2-year-old fillies on the turf; and the $80,000 Pumpkin Pie, a 7-furlong test on the dirt for fillies and mares 3-years-old and up.

Closing Day of the Belmont fall meet will also feature mandatory payouts for both the Early Pick 5 and Late Pick 5 wagers.

Live racing will then move to Aqueduct Racetrack for the 18-day fall meet, featuring 29 stakes, including 11 graded events, worth $3.41 million in purse money, which will kick off on Friday, November 6 and run through Sunday, December 6.

The Empire 6 requires the bettor to select the first-place finisher of the final six races of the day's card. On non-mandatory payout days, if one unique ticket exists, then 100 percent of the net pool, plus the jackpot carryover if applicable, will be paid to the winner. If there is no unique wager selecting the first-place finisher in all six races, then 75 percent of the day's net pool will be distributed to those who selected the first-place finisher in the greatest number of races. The remainder will be added into the jackpot and carried to the next day's Empire 6.

For more information on closing week of the 2020 Belmont Park fall meet, please visit NYRA.com.

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The 20-cent Rainbow 6 jackpot pool will be guaranteed at $1 million for Saturday's FTBOA Florida Sire Stakes program at Gulfstream Park. Multiple winning tickets Friday returned $39,583.64. There will also be a Super Hi-5 carryover of $3,612.13.

Saturday's Rainbow 6 sequence will be co-headlined by the $400,000 FSS In Reality and the $400,000 FSS My Dear Girl for fillies, the final legs of the tradition-rich series for 2-year-olds sired by accredited Florida stallions.

The Rainbow 6 carryover jackpot is usually only paid out when there is a single unique ticket sold with all six winners. On days when there is no unique ticket, 70 percent of that day's pool usually goes back to those bettors holding tickets with the most winners, while 30 percent is carried over to the jackpot pool. However, on mandatory-payout days, the entire pool is paid out to the bettor or bettors with the most winners in the six-race sequence.

Stonehedge LLC's Breeze On By will seek to become the fifth horse to sweep the open division of the Florida Sire Stakes in the In Reality. The undefeated Ralph Nicks-trained colt, who captured the $100,000 FSS Dr. Fager and the FSS $200,000 Affirmed would join Three Rules (2016), Sir Oscar (2003), Seacliff (1995) and Smile (1984) with a triumph in the 1 1/16-mile In Reality.

Owner/trainer Daniel Pita's Princess Secret, who captured the $200,000 FSS Affirmed, and Stonehedge LLC's Go Jo Jo Go, the $100,000 Desert Vixen winner, will clash again in the My Dear Girl.

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Among the special bets available across the two days is the Oaks/Derby Pick Six, which carries a $2 minimum investment, a mandatory payout and a low 15% takeout.

This special bet harkens back to what has seemingly become a bygone era – where pick six bets carried $2 minimums and were absent any jackpot provisions. The twist, of course, is that six graded races across the two days comprise this bet, the Alysheba, La Troienne and Kentucky Oaks on Friday, followed by the Derby City Distaff, Old Forester Turf Classic and Kentucky Derby on Saturday.

Horseplayers have grown both weary of, and disdainful at, the proliferation of jackpot bets – be them pick fives, pick sixes, or other iterations of wagers where a portion of every daily wager is retained for a jackpot paid on the occasion where there is only one individual winning ticket, while another portion is used as a “minor pool” which the multiple ticket winners for the day share.

For customers to really understand the pricing on these bets, it often takes more than just a cursory glance at a number – the takeout – to grasp the impact. Are players betting them? Sure. But, as outlined in our recent report, “Racing Not Only For (the) Elite,” an increasing number of these bets seem to be won by computer-driven high-volume bettors chasing jackpots with massive investments. Last Sunday at Del Mar, a $36,722 investment from a “single” player landed the jackpot of $686,660.

JACKPOT DECEPTION

Jackpot bets are tricky. They deceive.

For now, horse racing wagering in America is presented as almost exclusively a pari-mutuel. The sport earns a guaranteed cut on wagers, and should want as much wagering as possible. In jackpot bets, an amount of every wager is retained and paid to only one customer on the occurrence of that single customer having the only winning ticket in a particular bet.

There may be a belief that jackpot bets drive attention, because horseplayers are always able to shoot for some big carryover or, in the event the bet is not hit for a prolonged period and “forced-out,” wagering on a particular day will be outsized as horseplayers seek to claim the money they know they have a much better chance of winning.

By adding an artificial provision – the single ticket requirement to pay the jackpot – tracks have effectively limited overall wagering churn on other races and greatly increased the takeout on those “lucky” enough to have a winning ticket good enough for only the day's minor pool payout. A segment of informed horseplayers question the long-term, detrimental effects of offering bets where very few customers ever win. Their concerns are well-founded.

A paper from the March 2020 edition of Contemporary Economic Policy offers horse racing some potential lessons as to the long-term impact of actions similar to the proliferation of the jackpot bets in racing. Levi Perez, associate professor of economics in Spain's University of Oviedo and Ph.D candidate Alejandro Diaz are the authors of “Setting The Odds Of Winning The Jackpot: On The Economics of (Re) Designing Lottery Games.”

In the paper, Perez and Diaz contend that customer behavior in light of bigger jackpots, combined with reduced chances of winning a popular Spanish lottery game, changed outcomes for the negative.

“Bigger jackpots no longer translate into higher sales but rather the opposite: it is quite common for the same jackpot size to currently produce lower sales than before [the odds were substantially increased]” in the Spanish lottery game, La Primitiva.

“Players,” they say, “have now become less sensitive” to the jackpots.

This is no surprise to economists.

In racing, the awareness of the customer to their own sensitivity can be masked, as tracks market jackpot bets with one takeout rate, but realistically, charge daily winning customers a different, effective rate. Those who might have picked six winners in a day, but weren't the only ticket, experience a rate that is, in some cases, more than four times higher than the published rate.

WOULD COMMISSIONS APPROVE A BET WITH TAKEOUT AT 62.5%?

Unquestionably, Churchill's Single 6 is the best of the jackpot bets from a pricing standpoint, offering a daily effective takeout of just 23.5%, still significantly lower than even some traditional bets – like a trifecta at Penn National which carries an absurd 31% rake. Below is a sample of several jackpot bets that exist today. It should be clear not all jackpot bets are the same.

If $100,000 is bet into the Single 6 today, and it has a 15% takeout, the net pool is now at $85,000. If there are multiple winning combinations on the six-race sequence, the bet carries a provision that 90% of the net pool goes to any daily winners with all six winning horses and 10% goes each day to the jackpot. That means $76,500 is returned to winners and $8,500 goes to the jackpot.

For this given day, with $76,500 returned from an initial investment of $100,000, the effective takeout is 23.5%.

On the other end of the spectrum, a bet like Assiniboia's Jackpot Pick 5 is just ridiculous.

Picking five winners is, obviously, easier than picking six. That also means that having a single winning ticket for five winners becomes an almost impossible task. In fact, it hasn't happened once in 2020, through 45 days of racing. On two of those days, the jackpot was forced out, releasing the built-up carryover to any customer that picked five winners that night. But for the other 43 days, anyone with all five winners paid an effective takeout of 62.5%. Would a racing commission approve a bet with this high of a daily, effective takeout if they knew this to be the reality?

Promoting such bet-types beyond more traditional plays is pushing customers into bets with incredibly slim chances of winning, and when they do, but others do too, the return is significantly smaller than expected.

But “racing” benefits when customers churn winnings into subsequent bets – jackpot bets reduce overall churn. MANY people winning is good for racing, in the short and the long term. Customers respond on days when they know that a jackpot is being paid out – with days, weeks or even months of money which has been held is finally released. On these occasional days, effective takeout paid by winners is much lower than the published rate.

Here is the takeaway message: jackpot bets are bad for horse racing.

While jackpot bets might sporadically create intense participation from customers on days when the jackpot is “forced-out”, their widespread presence is, on the whole, detrimental to the greater sport.

There are many bettors who know this, and might find it laughable that some still don't.

Granted, not all jackpot bets are the same, but customers should stay attentive to the splits on each bet and the effective takeout (which is not published by the track) and compare it to the actual takeout rate (which is published). Tracks have made generally bad decisions for the greater business in last two decades – the proof is, unarguably, in the numbers.

Overall wagering on racing is not only down, but the composition of that handle is substantially different – play from a small number of heavily-rebated, computer-assisted bettors who can transmit their bets direct to the pools, bypassing traditional ADW setups, is up an estimated 114% in the last 16 years. Meanwhile, play from all other customers – the vast majority of them – is down an estimated 63% adjusted for inflation in the same period.

The two-day, Oaks/Derby Pick 6 with a $2 minimum and 15% takeout is a throwback to well…not all that long ago. It's a decent bet, engaging and “good” for racing. Churchill's own jackpot pick six is one of the “best” of a very troubling lot of jackpot bets, with a daily effective takeout of just 23.5%.

But if faced with an option, as you are on these Oaks/Derby days, it is worth supporting the lower takeout pick six.

For all the discussion around these last few months being a great time for racing to attract new players, we can't think of anything worse than new players being attracted and pushed towards churn-killing jackpot bets.

As racing enjoys a strange edition of one of its premier events, customers who still enjoy having a bet on racing should be provided with greater transparency on the prices they are really paying (takeout) when winning. Racing – including horsemen – cannot afford to continue treating a large segment of customers so poorly.

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“We are always looking for ways to promote our racing product and thought it would be fun to kickstart our Straight Fire 6 with a $100 guaranteed pool, which will be the lowest in the world,” laughed Eric Halstrom, vice president and general manager of racing. “With all the serious issues going on right now, we wanted to add some humor into the launch of our Straight Fire 6. We had an employee contest to name the wager and the $100 guaranteed pool gives us the distinction of setting another record – the lowest guaranteed pool of all-time!”

Live racing continues through Wednesday, Nov. 18 with action held Monday through Thursday beginning at 2:20 p.m. Three more Saturday programs are slated for all-Quarter Horse days Aug. 8, Oct. 23 and Oct. 24.

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Live coverage of all the races in the sequence are available with America's Day at the Races on FOX Sports and MSG+. Free Equibase-provided past performances are available for races that are part of the America's Day at the Races broadcast and can be accessed at https://www.nyra.com/belmont/racing/tv-schedule.

Following Saturday's Belmont Stakes Day card, which offers six graded stakes, highlighted by the 152nd running of the Grade 1, $1 million Belmont Stakes, the action will continue at Belmont Park on Sunday.

Race 5 will see a six-furlong inner turf sprint for 3-year-olds and up with an approximate post time of 3:29 p.m. In Race 6, a field of nine sophomore fillies will get their turn in a maiden claiming turf mile.

Sophomore fillies will look to sprint to success in Race 7 at 4:34 p.m., a six-furlong claiming race over Belmont's Big Sandy.

The sequence's penultimate race will be the Empire 6's lone stakes. A full field of 10 3-year-old fillies will compete over six furlongs on the inner turf in $80,000 Lady Shipman, with Race 8 going off at 5:05 p.m. Stoneway Farm's Cofactor will make both her seasonal and turf debut, entering off a six-month layoff for trainer Kelly Breen. Trainer Christophe Clement will saddle two fillies for the Lady Shipman in stakes-winner She's My Type and Notorious R B G.

A 1 1/16-mile grass route on the Widener turf featuring a full field of New York-bred maidens in the Race 9 finale at 5:36 p.m. will conclude the sequence.

The Empire 6 requires the bettor to select the first-place finisher of the final six races of the card. On non-mandatory payout days, if one unique ticket exists, then 100 percent of the net pool, plus the jackpot carryover if applicable, will be paid to the winner. If there is no unique wager selecting the first-place finisher in all six races, then 75 percent of the day's net pool will be distributed to those who selected the first-place finisher in the greatest number of races. The remainder will be added into the jackpot and carried to the next day's Empire 6.

For more information on the Empire 6, please visit http://www.nyrabets.com.

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