By T. D. Thornton
An afternoon-long outage at a wagering hub controlled by tote provider Sportech paralyzed much of the nation's pari-mutuel betting on Tuesday. The unspecified technical issue was deemed fixed by 4:30 p.m. Eastern time, but only after causing numerous delays and the eventual abandonment of live racing at two Thoroughbred tracks and a handful of harness and greyhound venues.
Even simulcast, advance-deposit wagering, and off-track-betting outlets served by another tote provider, like AmTote International, United Tote or Las Vegas Dissemination Company, had business affected by the crash simply because of the dearth of betting signals available nationwide.
Sportech clients Turf Paradise and Sam Houston Race Park both pulled the plug on live Thoroughbred racing, even though management at both tracks initially tried to buy time for the glitch to be fixed by moving back first post times before eventually having to cancel.
Mahoning Valley Race Course, which also utilizes the Spartech hub, ran its races as planned, but without betting and for purse money only.
The full card at Portland Meadows and two pari-mutuel races scheduled at Ocala Breeders' Sales Company, which both utilize AmTote hubs, were unaffected.
Sportech PLC is a London-based company with United States corporate offices in Connecticut and Georgia. It bought the U.S. tote provider Scientific Games Racing in 2010. According to industry sources, the affected hub is believed to be in New Jersey. TDN attempted to email or phone four separate company officials asking for an explanation of the problem on Tuesday afternoon, but did not receive any replies prior to deadline for this story.
Officials at affected outlets nationwide indicated that they were also largely in the dark about the specific nature of the outage.
“We were notified by Sportech that the problem was related to the recent storm that hit the East Coast, and it knocked out some power that was essential to their operation. Outside of that, I don't know the specifics as to what took the system down,” said Vincent Francia, the general manager at Turf Paradise.
Capital OTB in New York posted a Twitter message in the midst of the outage that read “Yep…not sure what's going on. Sportech, the tote company, seems to be having major issues. Hopefully resolved soon.”
Sam Houston Race Park director of marketing Jamie Nielsen said in a phone interview that “I just know that from on our side, we were told it was 'technical difficulties' and that they weren't going to be able to bring it up in time for us to live race.”
Francia said that to help compensate horsemen for racing expenses, both Turf Paradise and the local Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association split the cost of depositing $250 into track accounts of horsemen who had entrants scheduled to race on Tuesday.
There was plenty of online chatter throughout the afternoon bemoaning the potential “What if?” scenarios about such a crash occurring on a big Saturday instead of on a slow winter Tuesday. But Francia noted that these are exactly the types of days when Turf Paradise stands to make money as one of the few tracks running at an otherwise quiet time in the schedule.
“Right now, we dominate the whole [late Tuesday afternoon] market, because Sunland is down because of the herpes virus,” Francia said. “We lost money, the horsemen lost money, and the horseplayers were bewildered by the whole thing.”
Ironically, the crash occurred at a time when Sportech, according to a company press release issued last week, “will once again showcase its latest technologies for pari-mutuel betting” at the 36th Asian Racing Conference in Mumbai, India.
“I sure as hell hope it's a fix and not a band-aid,” Francia said when asked if he knew how confident Sportech was the problem had been totally solved. “If they don't have a redundancy [backup plan] in their system, I hope they think about getting one, because these things do happen.”
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