Deal reached over Ohio signals

Ohio horsemen have reached an agreement with River Downs and Beulah Park restoring, effective Friday, those tracks' signals to AmericaTab, an account-wagering operation owned in part by River and Beulah.

The two-year agreement ends a nearly three-week blackout of the signal on AmericaTab, a collection of account-wagering companies that includes Winticket.com and Brisbet.com. The agreement will also restore the River Downs signal on Television Games Network, a competitor to AmericaTab that was cut off by River when an agreement between the Ohio tracks and horsemen could not be reached.

Michael Weiss, the general manager of Beulah Park, declined to give details about the agreement, but he said that Beulah would not have to cut purses at its meet, which begins Sept. 24, as a result of the pact. Beulah had threatened to reduce purses without an agreement in place.

Dan Theno, the executive director of the Ohio Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association, also declined to give details, but he said that the horsemen's group was successful in "advancing the goal" of retaining more revenue from the signals for Thoroughbred horsemen. Negotiations on the agreement had broken down in part over the horsemen's insistence that harness horsemen in the state deserved a smaller share of account-wagering revenue.