Betting

by Walter Toner Rainy afternoon on Cape Cod and I had a few minutes to kill, so flipped the channel to TVG for a quick flutter. I selected the filly Just Like Magic, approaching the gate at 7-5 as the recipient of a $10 win wager in the 3rd race Oaklawn (3/28). She charged up the rail and won. Final odds were 3-5. WTF. Sorry for the crudeness. Racing will never engage the next generation of punters with 15-27% takeout and NO fixed odds, when they can bet on sports...

I retired in 2019 as the most prolific bugler in horse racing history with over 60,000 performances of "First Call" at a record-setting 51 racetracks in 23 states and Canada. My herald trumpet, which I used at NYRA for most of my time there, has been on display at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame for the past three years. Of this, I am very proud. But this is not the subject of my email. The subject is betting on horses, and I had some success in...

Premier Racedays, an undertaking by British Racing to market and promote racing's best racedays, will launch with the New Year's Day fixture at Cheltenham, the first of some 170 such programs to be staged in 2024. Premier Racedays is part of a two-year series of changes with the aim of growing British racing by 'increasing engagement among new and existing customers, improving revenues across all areas of the industry, promoting investment in the sport through the recruitment and retention of owners, and encouraging the best horses to be bred, trained...

Santa Anita Park, which will host this year's Breeders' Cup World Championships for a record 11th time Nov. 3 and 4 and storied Keeneland Racecourse, site of last year's Breeders' Cup, have announced that both tracks will combine to present the Keeneland/Santa Anita Breeders' Cup Challenge Pick 6 to players nationwide on Saturday, Oct. 7. A traditional $1 Pick 6 with a player-friendly 15% takeout, the Keeneland/Santa Anita Breeders' Cup Challenge Pick 6 will include the following Breeders' Cup "Win & You're In" Challenge Race qualifiers and be offered in...

Pat Cummings joins this week's TDN Writers' Room to discuss the expansion of CAWs and their longterm impact on the sport. This week's episode is sponsored by Keeneland, the Green Group, Coolmore, WinStar, the PHBA, the KTOB, XBTV, and West Point Thoroughbreds.

After wagering dropped by a troubling 6.22% through the first two months of the year, the sport rebounded in March. According to figures released Thursday by Equibase, handle was up 2.14% during the month when compared to 2022. A total of $962,703,949 was wagered in March. In the category of average wagering per race day, there was an increase of 1.10%. Handle is still down by 3.40% for the year. The advances reversed a trend that began in October of last year. Handle fell by 4.93% in October and continued...

Jim McIngvale (Mattress Mack) made history when the Houston Astros won the World Series. He made bets that returned $75 million when they won, the largest win ever in the history of sports betting. The bets were tied into a promotion McIngvale has used many times at his Gallery Furniture Stores in Houston. If he wins the bet, his customers get free mattresses. He's great at getting publicity for himself and his stores, but never had he seen anything like what happened with this bet, the story of which became...

A new Kentucky Derby Future Wager pool with up to 40 betting interests, including the popular "All Others" option, will debut Tuesday, Nov. 1 and close Thursday, Nov. 3 in advance of the Breeders' Cup World Championships' Future Stars Friday. The new three-day pool, which features $2 Win and Exacta wagering, will open Tuesday, Nov. 1 at noon (all times Eastern) and close Thursday, Nov. 3 at 6 p.m. Technology advancements now allow up to 40 pari-mutuel betting interests, up from 24 in previous years. Track officials will release the...

Five months after New Hampshire gambling regulators and the state's attorney general disclosed that they were investigating the TwinSpires advance deposit wagering (ADW) platform over concerns that the Churchill Downs, Inc. (CDI)-owned entity has operated for years without being explicitly licensed there, TwinSpires is ceasing operations in the Granite State. Back in April, Charlie McIntyre, the executive director of the New Hampshire Lottery, which regulates all forms of gambling in the state, told WMUR-TV that "They're not regulated by us, nor do they operate on any confines of state law.......

On this week's episode of Bettor Things with Joe Bianca, the host welcomes Seth Merrow, a public handicapper for the industry-leading Capital OTB channel and administrator of Equidaily, a popular racing news aggregation and handicapping site. Merrow talks about growing up a half-hour from Saratoga and the way he's seen the track change over the years, the challenges of being a public handicapper, the current state of racing journalism and more. In his Breeders' Cup handicapping segment, Bianca lays out plays for Saturday's GII FanDuel Turf Sprint S. and GII Kentucky...

On this week's episode of Bettor Things with Joe Bianca, the host welcomes Seth Merrow, a public handicapper for the industry-leading Capital OTB channel and administrator of Equidaily, a popular racing news aggregation and handicapping site. Merrow talks about growing up a half-hour from Saratoga and the way he's seen the track change over the years, the challenges of being a public handicapper, the current state of racing journalism and more.

"One of the most urgent issues facing our industry is that of improved electronic security for the pari-mutuel wagering system." This simple declaration was part of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA)'s five-year strategic plan covering 2006 through 2010, and published in 2005. Approaching two decades later, there has been little progress on the topic, and recent wagering incidents in the summer of 2022 highlight the long-term failure to address these problems. If you think the stewards are always in charge of stopping wagering when the race begins, think again....