Racing & Gaming Conference | Horse Racing Free Tips

Pat Brown, the director of The Racing and Gaming Conference at Saratoga, knows what makes an agenda tick. He has seen his fair share of seemingly endless Power Points, glazed-over eyes and the attendees that surf the Internet in an attempt to multitask. The best way to combat the conference malaise? Just a healthy dose of fun.

“I've spent over 40 years of in and out of government, thinking about and writing about the gaming and horse racing industry,” said Brown, a former advisor to New York's Governor Mario Cuomo and an attorney that lives just south of Albany. “I want everyone to come away from this conference having learned something interesting, but most of all, I want them to have fun.”

As the director of the what will be the third installment of this hybrid conference that will be held at the Hilton in Saratoga Springs, New York from Aug. 14-16, Brown and his planning committee have put forth yet another stellar card. Once again, those in attendance will take in cutting-edge topics under the umbrella of racing and gaming with an ambitious schedule just out this week.

This year's slate runs the gambit when it comes to angles and there is something for everyone that is interested in the intersection between these two worlds. “We've got something for lawyers, thorny issues, where the little guy fits in and how technology shapes and impacts the racetrack and the casino,” said Brown.

After an opening reception at the Adelphi Hotel on Monday, Aug. 14, the conference shifts into high gear Tuesday with experts that will speak on the following topics:

New York Casino Expansion to New York City and Surrounding Counties: Is the Finish Line in Sight?
Consolidation of Gaming: Status and Implications
Tribal Digital Gaming: Has the Moment Finally Arrived?
Technology and Gaming: New Challenges, New Solutions
The Implications of Exclusion for Racetracks and Casinos
Consumer Protections and the Federalization of Gaming

Pat Brown | courtesy of Brown and Weintraub

“We want this conference to not be so New York-centric,” said Brown. “The way you do that is by thinking broadly and topics like tribal gaming, regulatory issues and legal questions like exclusion, are all applicable across state lines.”

Sandwiched within day one is a lunch lineup which includes an address by Stacie Clark Rogers of the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance and a keynote delivered by Joe Asher, President of IGT Sports Betting. “Joe's is coming to keep us energized, entertained because I think lunch needs to give everyone a break from the conference,” Brown said.

On day two, the conference concludes with four sessions that deal with aspects of racing and wagering, including:

Harness Racing: An Industry in Decline–or in Transformation?
Historical Horse Racing Machines: The Tail Wagging the Horse?
HISA–Legal Limbo and Regulatory Reluctance
Racing's Changing Customer Base, CRWs and the Future of Betting

Each of these hot-button issues draw from an arc of past precedent and are extremely significant to the future of the horse racing industry. “Not everything is about Thoroughbreds,” said Brown, who has also owned shares in racehorses. “We want to expand the vision to harness racing because it has much to teach us about statutory issues concerning aspects like the minimum number of race days.”

Brown knows that a panel concerning HISA is important, but he wanted to find a way to zero in on something specific. How state regulators are handling the current situation seemed appropriate. He also understands that conference attendees will be particularly keen to hear about the impact of Historical Horse Racing Machines and the power behind Computerized Robotic Wagering groups. “I have no doubt that those sessions will generate some interesting questions and debate, especially when everyone is talking about the impact on track handle,” said Brown.

Wrapping up the conference, some 50 attendees who purchase tickets will have the opportunity to take in the Saratoga meet along The Spa Veranda. Pat Brown's idea of fun, indeed.

Click here for more information concerning registration and hotel information for The Racing & Gaming Conference at Saratoga.

The post Agenda Set For 3rd Annual Racing & Gaming Conference At Saratoga appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Despite COVID shutdowns, a total of $21.52 billion was wagered legally on sports in the U.S. in 2020, about twice what was bet on horse racing, and the gap will be even greater this year and for years to come. Sports betting is growing exponentially and an argument can be made that some of its success is coming at horse racing's expense. It's surely siphoning off dollars that otherwise might be available to racing's pari-mutuel pools and it has to be drawing existing and potential customers away from racing.

Yet, at last week's Racing & Gaming Conference in Saratoga, NYRA CEO and President David O'Rourke made the surprising statement that sports betting represented a “once-in-a-generational opportunity for our sport.”

He may just have a point.

The primary difference between betting on sports and racing is that sports bets are based on fixed odds and racing uses a pari-mutuel system. That's not a problem when it comes to on-track bets or bets made through an ADW. But the pari-mutuel system doesn't work for the bookmakers now taking sports bets legally, most of them online. That's why popular gambling websites such as bet365.com offer bets on every sport imaginable, that is, other than horse racing. There's the four major sports, soccer, golf, tennis, even darts and handball.

If these same online websites were to begin taking bets on racing, O'Rourke said racing would have an unprecedented opportunity to grow its customer base.

“With sports betting you have, literally, every other sport on these platforms,” he said. “To put racing side by side with those sports, we think that is a winning combination. It just opens up our customer base, 10 times, 20 times. It's an incredible opportunity and we look forward to that.”

The first step toward solving the problem is for horse racing to adopt the fixed odds system. That doesn't mean the end of pari-mutuels, which will always be necessary for exotic bets. It does mean creating an alternative pool where the odds are set and they do not change after a gambler has placed their bets. Without fixed odds, racing will never benefit from the growth of sports wagering.

Were there fixed odds bets available for Saturday's GI Alabama S. at Saratoga, a player may have been able to bet on Malathaat (Curlin) to win at odds of, say, minus 180. That means someone would have to wager $180 on her to win $100. Maracuja (Honor Code) would have been something like plus 650.

Fixed odds are what the sports bettor knows. They'll never understand or embrace a system where they might bet on a horse at 8-1 only to see it go down to 6-1 at post time and then plummet to 7-2 in the middle of a race. But the players, looking for action, may very well be happy to make a fixed odds bet on a Belmont or Santa Anita race during halftime of an NFL game or throw a bet on the GI Runhappy Travers S. into a parlay that includes a bet on the Yankees to win and the over-under on a Dodgers-Giants game.

This is why the legalization for fixed odds betting in New Jersey is an important first step. There are a lot of details that remain unclear, particularly when it comes to who will be allowed to offer the bets. We do know that there will be on-track fixed odds betting and it may also be available through TVG's 4njbets.com, the only ADW allowed to take wagers in the state. But bets through those two platforms don't figure to do anything more than shift existing pari-mutuel bets from one pool to another.

It will likely take some time and there are plenty of hurdles to clear, but look for BetMakers, the company hired by Monmouth to operate its fixed odds system, to cut deals with large bookmaking firms like bet365.com, FanDuel and DraftKings.

Dennis Drazin, who heads the management team that runs Monmouth Park and who has been instrumental in pushing through fixed odds bets in New Jersey, sees a future where every conceivable website and betting app will include the option to bet on racing. But he also fears that the sport may shoot itself in the foot. New Jersey has already had an experiment with a form of fixed odds wagering with the Betfair betting exchange. It never caught on and the plug was pulled in September of 2020. One of Betfair's problems was its inability to secure agreements with the top-tier tracks to add their races to its betting menu.

“If not everybody gets on board, that would be bad for racing,” Drazin said. “It will be like exchange wagering, where we were able to get some B signals or C signals but not the A tracks, like NYRA, the Stronach tracks, the Kentucky signals. We need to have those signals. If we are not able to offer the top tracks, I'm not sure how successful this will be. We can't have everybody scared to do this because they think fixed odds wagering will cannibalize the other pools. That's going to be a problem.”

One can only hope that the industry will give fixed odds wagering a chance to make it. This is a sport where betting has been stagnant for years and, when factoring in inflation, has dropped significantly since handle hit its peak in 2003 at $15.1 billion. That's a huge problem. Whether they work or not, it's time to try new things to improve handle on the sport. Can we get the sport bettor to start placing bets on Monmouth, Saratoga, Del Mar? If done right, if embraced by the entire industry and marketed, sports betting could well be the way out of our sport's wagering malaise.

Honoring Secretariat

There is no more GI Secretariat S. at Arlington Park. The name of this year's running was changed to the Bruce D. S., a race that is unlikely to be run again because of the inevitable closing of the Chicago track. That means that the sport no longer has a major race named in honor of the GOAT. That can't be.

My idea is to rename the GI Belmont S. the Secretariat and to do so for the 2023 running, the 50th anniversary of Secretariat's historic 31-length romp in the Belmont. Ok, that's never going to happen, but NYRA should still fill the void and name a race in honor of Secretariat. He was a New York horse and there should be a New York race named for him.

Limiting the list to races he won in New York, the best candidate is the GI Hopeful S. Secretariat won that in 1972, so next year's running is the 50th anniversary of that win. Naming the race after the greatest horse ever to step foot on a New York track would be a fitting honor.

The post The Week in Review: Sports Betting May Not Be the Enemy After All appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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