Equibase offering 2023 racing data for research

Equibase, the official data supplier of Thoroughbred racing in the U.S., will make a full year of its racing data available for research and evaluation purposes, the company announced on Monday.

The release of a large batch of Equibase’s racing data has been sought for years by a number of handicappers and researchers who say they are interested in teasing out information from the raw data. The dataset will include all past-performance data from all Equibase-charted races in 2023, along with the result charts.

“One of our top requests is the use of historical data from people looking to conduct research for a wide variety of purposes,” said Jim Vanderbosch, Equibase’s vice president of sales and business development, in a release. “Our hope is that this data not only will assist people in their respective research projects but will spur additional innovation in the handicapping product landscape and provide an on-road for those in the traditional sports betting markets looking to enter the racing market.”

Equibase’s handicapping products are available for a fee, and users of the company’s website can view results charts but not the raw data used to generate the charts. The company has also protected its data from large-scale scraping efforts on the website by limiting the number of charts that can be viewed at one time on a single browser.

Handicappers who have built betting models have often relied on their own data sets, usually gleaned from databases that they have built on their own. Many handicappers who have criticized the growth and dominance of computerized robotic wagering systems have said that the release of Equibase data could help them generate competing models.

“This is what we’d consider a first step in making more complimentary data available that can be used to continue to improve our sport, enable the start-up ecosystem, and stimulate innovation,” said Kyle McDoniel, the president and chief operating officer of Equibase, which is owned by a partnership of The Jockey Club and U.S. racetracks.

The dataset will be provided to individuals through a Dropbox file. The download requires users to sign an agreement that states the data “may only be used for your own internal, non-commercial testing purposes” and prohibits the user from publicly displaying or disseminating the data or “any analyses or derivatives.”

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