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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Go Figure: Wagering Spikes On Gulfstream Park Maiden Claiming Race

The fourth race on Sunday, Oct. 3, at Gulfstream Park was just a maiden claiming race with a nondescript field of nine fillies – who'd combined for eight second- and third-place finishes from 48 total starts. The runners carried a $12,500 claiming tag and were racing for a $21,000 purse.

Yet, for reasons unknown, this six-furlong race stood out to some gamblers playing the nine-race Sunday program.

The $193,956 in win, place and show bets exceeded every other race on the card. So did the $198,851 in the exacta pool – fully $54,034 (37%) higher than the second biggest exacta pool on the day. The $127,460 in trifecta bets and $90,433 wagered on the superfecta also were the largest pools of the day for those bet types (the trifecta was higher by 38% and the superfecta by 26%).

Combining straight bets with these three exotic wagering pools, there was $610,700 bet on this maiden claimer, $114,210 (23%) more than the day's feature race, an allowance/optional claiming event with a field of nine.

In fact, of the 177 races run at Gulfstream Park in the previous month, beginning with Sept. 3, only five other races had larger exacta pools and only four trifecta pools were bigger than Sunday's fourth race. Keep in mind that Saturdays almost always out-handle Sunday cards.

The race was won in front-running fashion by Rubysa, a 3-year-old Gone Astray filly making her third start and first since March 26. Rubysa was 15-1 on the morning line and bet down to 2.70-1. First-time starter Sade Purse finished second at 17.90-1 with 1.5-1 favorite J D's Vista third and Princess Tereska, the 4-1 second choice, finishing fourth.

Both the winner and fourth-place finisher were making their first starts for trainer Juan Reviriego, who less than five months earlier returned to training to run his first horse since 2009 and proceeded to win with three of his first five starters. He then lost with his next 12 runners going into Sunday's fourth race.

Rubysa and Princess Teresko are owned by Long Trail Stables LLC, an entity registered in Florida by Felice Iadisernia,  the brother of horseman Giuseppe Iadisernia. The latter trained horses for more than a decade, sending out his last runners in 2016, and he and other family members are registered agent for a number of equine-related businesses, including Nelson Jones Farm and Training Center of Ocala, Northwest Stud, and companies that supply shavings and feed to Florida horsemen.

Rubysa was ridden by Jose Morelos, who came to Gulfstream Park earlier this year from Panama and has won with 29 of his first 268 mounts. Carlos Lugo, who had ridden trainer Reviriego's three other winners this year, had been aboard Rubysa in her two previous starts. Lugo rode Princess Tereska in the Oct. 3 race. Breaking from the No. 5 post position, Princess Tereska showed very little from the outset as Rubysa was hustled to the lead from the two post and would draw off by 4 ¾ lengths.

Francisco D'Angelo, a leading conditioner in Venezuela who began training in the U.S. in 2015, had previously trained both Rubysa and Princess Tereska but has not started a horse since Aug. 20, according to Equibase.

Rubysa paid $7.40 to win and combined with 17.90-1 longshot Sade Purse for a $1 exacta payoff of $82.80. The 50-cent trifecta, incorporating the 1.50-1 favorite J D's Vista in third, paid $84, while the 10-cent superfecta paid $111.29 with Princess Tereska in the fourth spot.

 

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Wagering Figures Up from 2020

Wagering on U.S. races through the first eight months of the year is up 17.51% over the same period in 2020, with $8,585,662,502 wagered on races in the country through August compared to $7,306,542,949 in 2020, according to figures released Sunday by Equibase.

Purses rose 44.77%, from $518,929,044 in 2020 to $751,230,068 this year, while race dates increased from 2,144 to 2,781 and number of races increased from 17,794 to 22,862.

During the month of August, a total of $1,206,119,197 was wagered on 455 race days and 3,539 races in 2021.

In August 2020, $1,153,994,899 was wagered on 445 race days and 3,608 races.

Purses rose 20.12% for the month, from $104,539,502 in 2020 to $125,575,863 this year.

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Gov. Murphy Signs Bill Approving Fixed Odds at Monmouth

Fixed Odds wagering will be available at Monmouth Park in the coming weeks after Gov. Philip Murphy signed legislation Thursday approving the new bet, with implementation awaiting regulatory approval from the New Jersey Racing Commission and the Division of Gaming Enforcement.

Monmouth Park, working in conjunction with BetMakers Technology Group, will be the first racetrack in the country to offer Fixed Odds wagering, a popular bet in Europe and Australia.

“We appreciate the continued support from Gov. Murphy and the state legislature, as well as Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin and Senate President Steve Sweeney, in advancing Fixed Odds wagering,” said Dennis Drazin, Chairman and CEO of Darby Development LLC, the operator of Monmouth Park. “It provides our patrons with another wagering option that we firmly believe will be a popular one.”

The bill was co-sponsored by state assemblymen Ronald S. Dancer and Ralph R. Caputo and state senators Vin Gopal and Paul A. Sarlo.

Fixed Odds wagering allows bettors to retain the odds at the time of their bet, as opposed to pari-mutuel wagering, where odds are not finalized until betting is completed.

When it is available at Monmouth Park, Fixed Odds will be offered on win, place and show betting at the outset, with a minimum wager of $1. There will be designated Fixed Odds windows throughout the Grandstand and Clubhouse, with televisions displaying the current Fixed Odds.

Monmouth Park will also show the Fixed Odds for each race during the track's in-house televised feed of races.

Fixed Odds wagering will begin with Monmouth Park races, with the expectation that it will expand to other tracks that enter into an agreement to permit Fixed Odds wagering on their races.

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