NYRA Situation Sounds All Too Familiar

--by Kelsey Riley

While ­reading Bill Finley’s Op/Ed titled “NYRA Is For Sale. But Who Would Want It?” In Friday’s TDN, I admittedly felt chills run down my spine when I read the following excerpt:

   “There’s every reason to believe that this anti-racing governor who keeps hoovering cash from casino companies will find a way to cut racing out of the equation, whether that means taking VLT revenue away from the track operator or from purses or from both. State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli issued what was a scary threat back in August when releasing an audit of VLT racino revenues. ‘We are unable to determine whether the millions of dollars that pay for increased purses (prize money), rather than for education, are having their intended effect.’”

   (for the full Op/Ed column, click here).

   For anyone who has kept a close eye on the racing business over the last few months, and years, there are some keys phrases here that are all too familiar.

   Last year while interning at the TDN, I wrote a magazine feature on what was then the future of New York racing: the Aqueduct racino (click here to read). I have to admit upon starting the project I wasn’t fully convinced that a racino would solve all the State’s woes. Therefore, I asked administrators the hard questions: what would stop the government from tweaking the agreement and encroaching on NYRA’s share of the VLT revenues, such as we had already seen in Pennsylvania and Indiana at the time? I was assured by a number of parties that the NYRA racetracks were different from most others, because NYRA is a not-for-profit organization, and its arrangement with the State created “layers of legislation” that would make it difficult for the government to alter the agreed upon distribution of the VLT revenues. So long as Aqueduct, Belmont, and Saratoga were being run by NYRA, the VLT revenues would be safe. I was told that NYRA and Genting had modeled the racino after Woodbine’s (also run by a not-for-profit), so what could go wrong?

   As we have learned this year from Woodbine, a lot can go wrong, and very quickly. In early March, the Ontario government announced they were considering pulling racing’s 20% share of the revenues from the Slots at Racetracks agreement, which had fuelled purses and breeders awards at the province’s Thoroughbred and Standardbred tracks for more than 15 years. Just a few weeks later, the government officially ended the Slots at Racetracks program, throwing the industry (and particularly the breeding sector) into turmoil. Stallion nominations were cancelled left, right and center, a handful of stallions have since been exported from the province, and the Ontario-bred yearling sale earlier this month experienced significant declines. What is more, it has been truly disheartening how the government has fabricated outright lies to justify its behavior to the public: they have described the racetracks’ cut of the slots revenues ($345 million a year) as a “subsidy” to rich racetrack owners, and they have depicted these “rich racetrack owners” as taking money away from education for school children and healthcare for the elderly. The truth is that the racetracks’ 20% was used to fuel purses and breeders awards, which stimulated growth in the breeding industry and therefore had positive reverberations across the province’s agricultural industry. Growth of the racing and breeding industries also allowed them to spend nearly $2 billion annually within the province. Furthermore, these “subsidies” were in fact a revenue-sharing agreement, because Ontario’s racetracks provided the government existing infrastructures in which to build its casinos. The racing industry’s share of the revenue also offered some compensation for the risk that casino players would take away from racing’s wagering customers.  

   While the distribution of revenues from the Aqueduct racino have yet to be altered, my point is that recent developments show that it may not be all that difficult for it to happen. Look how easy it was for Cuomo to demand that NYRA be sold, when it was under contract to run racing in New York for 25 years. At this point nothing is set in stone, and we can only guess what future operation of the NYRA tracks will look like, but to me, the situation (as well as wording in recent reports, like Finley’s) are eerily similar to what we have seen in Ontario. I certainly hope I am wrong.   

A day at the Racino with the kids?

I like horse racing. A lot. I enjoy a good day at the track and have visited my share of them. My wife, however, is borderline obsessed. A little background: she used to write full-time for one of the big industry publications, freelanced for many years more, and also was an advertising copywriter for a Thoroughbred ad agency for several years. We've bred a few horses and she’s been on the boards of two major industry organizations. The first time she’d ever visited Lexington, she called me after seeing Calumet and told me she wasn't returning home unless I agreed to move to Lexington. I moved (she's convincing; what can I say?). I tell you that because, as we now travel full-time around the country, one of the goals of our trip was to visit every racetrack in North America. We haven't met that goal and have, at times, gotten pretty discouraged along the way.

Several months ago we were in Delaware and one day while I was working she "tried" to visit Delaware Park with our three young kids. She set off in high spirits and it looked to be a fun family day, just like we were accustomed to at Keeneland or Churchill Downs, our 'home tracks,' so to speak. Unfortunately, neither of us had been to a casino-based track before and didn't realize the ramifications of going to one with children.

While I can’t speak for other racinos, my wife learned pretty quickly you can't see a race at Delaware Park if you have kids. There is no possible way (that any available employee or security guard knew about -- and she asked several) to get from the entrance to the apron without going through the casino. Kids aren’t allowed to set foot in the casino, not even to pass through it on the way to the grandstand. There was a playground they could have gone to on the first turn, but she wasn’t there for a playground. She simply loves racing and wanted to enjoy a few races from the historic grandstand. One of the track employees directed her to an "entrance" that she had to walk with the kids (in the rain!) all the way around the gargantuan casino/grandstand to get to, but they turned out to be locked doors. She just wanted to show the kids an historic track where a lot of people cut their teeth in racing, my boss included, and finally just left after two hours of frustration.

I’m not trying to bash Delaware Park, but from what I understand people used to rave about that track as being one of the most family-friendly around. It now seems anti-family. I suspect the problem Delaware exhibited here is not only confined to Delaware, but to racinos in general. It seems like some tracks just hold horse racing to have a casino. That's too bad.

Not for you horseplayers...
anh-usa.org, photo.

This was all brought back to mind by a note yesterday from a friend who is a long-time handicapper. In fact, I'm betting the only day he won't have a bet down on a race somewhere is the day after he dies, because he'll have been to drive-through betting at Keeneland the morning of. Anyhow, he mentioned another racino issue. He attended a handicapping contest last fall at Louisiana Downs where he'd paid a pretty significant entry fee to play. His complaint was that on the horse side, water and soft drinks were $2 a bottle and they made you pay for every little thing. In the next room over, in the same building on the casino side, they couldn't seem to give everything away fast enough, including that same bottled water and soft drinks. In fact, if a casino player tried to enter the horseplayers’ area, security made them throw their water or other drink in the trash. As he wrote, “If a new fan were to go through this, wouldn’t they choose the casino over the race track?”

Seems like a bit of disconnect to me. I'm not saying that horseplayers should be given drinks and food all day, but if the two are combined in the same building, at least make the two worlds a little more level.

I’m not sure there will ever be a right answer to the racino v. casino v. racetrack question, but I think it would be nice for management to let the people who want to go to the track, just go to the track, and for the people who want to play blackjack, just play blackjack. As for me, I just want to be able to take my kids to the races. How can we expect to build future support for this sport if we can't do that?

-- Robert Williams