Sorely needed in the American horse betting landscape, fixed-odds wagering–bets where the player is guaranteed the odds displayed at the time he or she bets a horse and isn't affected by late parimutuel odds drops–is set to debut in the States later this month at Monmouth Park via Australian bookmaking company BetMakers. Wednesday morning, BetMakers' head of international operations Dallas Baker joined the TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland to discuss the logistics of implementing a fixed-odds system to try to replicate its success in Australia, how confident he is that the technology will eventually be adopted nationwide, potential crossover with traditional sportsbooks and more.
Calling in via Zoom as the Green Group Guest of the Week, Baker explained how a horseplayer at Monmouth can place a fixed-odds bet, saying, “There will be separate tellers for tote bets and fixed-odds bets, but you just go up to the teller as you normally would with a tote bet and say, 'I want $20 to win on number one in race one' or whatever it is, and away you go. There will be displays all around the course with what the fixed-odds market is. When you're betting fixed odds, the price at that time is the price you get, which is very important to the customer, but you'll also get to see the most recent fluctuations of that horse, since it's a liquid market. So you'll get an idea about what the popularity or the unpopularity of that horse has been as well.”
One of BetMakers' ultimate goals is to have fixed-odds wagering be available and attractive for sports bettors, and Baker said carving out even a small slice of the exploding sports betting market in America would be a major boon to racing.
“We've seen this great boom of sports betting in the past three years since PASPA [the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which effectively banned sports betting outside of a few states] was repealed, and the team that repealed it has been part of our team,” he said. “If you look in New Jersey alone, at the moment we're seeing close to $1 billion a month that's being invested in sports betting. As a racing industry, if we can tap into that and be moderately successful, get 10% of that figure, that's another $100 million being invested into racing, which, with the right modeling, can then go back towards funding the sport. The key to getting the sports gambler is giving the bookmakers something to market and fixed-odds betting is something the bookmakers want to market. I've spoken to a lot of the betting firms and they say they actually want to spend the majority of their marketing budget in the next few years on horse racing. That opens up a whole new gambit of people and organizations with deep pockets who really want to aggressively market racing to acquire new clients.”
Elsewhere on the show, which is also sponsored by West Point Thoroughbreds, the Minnesota Racehorse Engagement Project and Legacy Bloodstock, the writers laid out what to watch for on a blockbuster holiday weekend of racing, analyzed the most recent story about Bob Baffert in the Washington Post and announced a special on-scene show for the Writers' Room's upcoming 100th episode. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version or find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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