Emerald Downs announces penny breakage

Emerald Downs in Auburn, Wash., will eliminate breakage at its upcoming 2024 meet and pay all winning wagers to the nearest cent, the track announced on Monday.

Emerald will become the first track outside of Kentucky to drop the practice of rounding payoffs to the nearest nickel or dime, a holdover from the days when payouts were distributed in the form of cash and tellers needed to quickly redeem winning wagers. Emerald said in a release that it has estimated that the decision will lead to an additional $400,000 distributed to winning bettors this year.

Horseplayers and bettors’ advocates have called for a reduction in the amount of breakage for decades, but efforts to change the rates have met with some resistance because the amounts leftover from breakage are often retained by racetracks or distributed to the racing commission or other racing constituencies.

In 2022, the Kentucky legislature passed a bill requiring tracks to use penny breakage, a change that went into effect in the fall of that year. The entire racing industry supported the bill, in part because the legislation also contained a favorable tax rate for gambling devices operated by the tracks, mitigating any negative impact from the reduction in the rate.

Under penny breakage, payoffs are most heavily affected for bets that have low payouts, such as the straight pools. At Emerald Downs, the takeout rate for win, place, and show pools is 16 percent.

Emerald also announced on Monday that it will update its morning line throughout its race card to better reflect the anticipated odds on horses and reduce the potential difference between the morning line and a horse’s final odds. Large differences between the two figures are a consistent source of criticism from some horseplayers who view “late-odds drops” with suspicion.

Vince Bruun, the track’s director of media relations and line-maker, said that he will manually adjust the morning lines for the track’s simulcast and online data feeds approximately 20 minutes before post of each race, using information that can be gleaned from the will-pay pools in multi-leg bets, such as the daily double and pick three.

“It’s not quite scientific, but I’m pretty sure I can get it reasonably close,” Bruun said, noting that he typically makes the first morning-line four to seven days prior to the live card. “For the people who aren’t already checking the will-pays, we’re hoping it will be helpful.”

Emerald Downs is scheduled to start its 55-day 2024 meet on May 4, the date of the Kentucky Derby.

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