There’s a new gold rush in Wyoming, and it’s centered on the state’s horse racing industry. Three racetracks have opened in the sparsely populated state over the last decade, and a fourth is in the works. Earlier this year, a partnership including the owners of Kentucky Downs bought one of the tracks, Wyoming Downs, bringing out-of-state business interests into the famously parochial state for the first time. Meanwhile, the owners of the new track, to be called Thunder Plains, has told the racing commission that they plan to run as many as 32 live race dates, double the minimum required under state law. “We are the talk of the industry,” said Brande Koltiska, the pari-mutuel coordinator at the Wyoming Gaming Commission, at a meeting on Thursday. “We have out-of-state companies buying racetracks. We have companies looking to build racetracks.” Driving the gold rush are historical horse racing machines, the slot machine-like devices that use previously run horse races to generate payoffs. Under a law passed by the state legislature in 2013, any racetrack licensee can operate the machines, without limits on the number of devices or the number of locations where they can be placed, provided the locations are approved by the gambling commission. :: Bet the races with a $200 First Deposit Match + FREE All Access PPs! Join DRF Bets. At least for now. Over the past few months, the legislature, citing public dissatisfaction with the number of betting locations in the state, has begun taking a closer look at the tracks and their devices. Earlier this week, the legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee conducted a hearing to discuss whether the growth needs to be checked and then authorized a wide-ranging study to examine the issues that have cropped up as the devices and gambling locations have proliferated. “The laser is on us, with what’s happening with the [Joint Appropriations Committee],” said Eugene Joyce, a long-time player in the state’s racing industry and the co-owner of the company that owns and operates Sweetwater Downs and its betting locations. “They see these big pots of money, so it’s incumbent on all of us to make it all about the racing.” Even a hardcore racing fan would be forgiven for knowing next-to-nothing about Wyoming’s racing industry. The state’s three tracks are slated to run a total of 54 race dates this year, holding a combination of races for Quarter Horses and Thoroughbreds (mostly Quarter Horse). None of the tracks export their simulcast signals, because doing so would put them under the jurisdiction of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, driving up costs, in a state where the federal government is not well-regarded. Horse racing in Wyoming struggled throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, and Wyoming’s only remaining Thoroughbred racetrack closed in 2010. But the legislature came to the rescue in 2013, authorizing historical horse racing machines under the belief that they would re-invigorate the state’s storied equine industry. As of this week, the state’s three tracks operate a total of 2,486 devices at 43 locations, including the three tracks. With a total state population of 584,000, according to the most recent census data, that’s one machine for every 235 citizens. In Kentucky, where historical horse racing machines are operated at roughly a dozen locations and have generated hundreds of millions of dollars for the racetracks in the state, the ratio is 1 for every 652 people. The Wyoming legislature’s interest is not limited to the tracks and their gambling devices. Over the past several years, the legislature has also authorized “skill-based” gambling games and sports betting. It’s estimated now that the size of the entire gambling industry in the sparsely populated state is $1 billion, bringing fears of oversaturation and cannibalization of economic activity in the small towns that dot the state’s 97,000 square miles. “Gaming is just reallocating money from unlucky people to lucky people, with the operators taking out a commission as it goes through” said Tom Lubnau, the liaison between Gov. Mark Gordon and the state’s gambling commission, while testifying at the Joint Appropriations Committee meeting, according to the Cowboy State Daily, a local newspaper. “How much of that occurs before it becomes a big toll on Wyoming paychecks? I think we’ve done a very good job in this state staying ahead of things, but the growth is just so big and the dollars are so huge.” Racing days not growing with HHR Specifically to racing, several lawmakers have questioned why racing dates have not kept pace with the growth in the number of devices, especially in recent years. The three tracks, which are each required to run a minimum of 16 race dates to secure a gambling license, ran a combined 50 live race dates in 2021, and the number has only increased by four dates since then. “You would think [HHR growth] would spawn growth in the other,” said Rep. Lloyd Larson, at the committee hearing. That sentiment was echoed at the Thursday gambling commission meeting. “Right now there is no economic incentive to expand horse racing days,” said Dennis Boal, a commissioner, to racetrack representatives. “The risk is there that you all do the minimum races, but then you have this huge expansion of HHRs, and we’re not really growing the horse racing industry in Wyoming, we’re growing the gaming industry.” :: Bet with the Best! Get FREE All-Access PPs and Weekly Cashback when you wager on DRF Bets. While some legislators and government aides have floated the idea of tying the number of devices to the number of race dates, racetrack operators warned the gambling commission at the Thursday meeting to approach that idea cautiously, saying that the number of race dates is dependent on a variety of critical factors, such as the short racing season in Wyoming, competition among tracks, and the availability of horses. Kyle Ridgeway, the chief financial officer of 307 Racing, which owns Energy Downs in Gillette, said that the weather in Wyoming only allows live racing to be conducted from late May to early September. With three tracks running, the tracks are already going head-to-head throughout June. That’s before Thunder Plains enters the mix next year. “You’re creating an incentive to have overlapping race dates in multiple locations with a very limited horse population,” Ridgeway said. Ridgeway later added that he was not enthusiastic about attracting more horses from outside states, due to the pressures that would put on Wyoming-based horsemen. “We don’t want a lot of horsemen coming from out-of-state pushing all of our Wyoming horses out,” Ridgeway said. In 2023, those horsemen received $6.8 million in payments from the state’s breeding and racing fund, which awards bonuses to statebreds and horses that remain in the state for certain periods of time. In 2023, the average daily purse distribution at the tracks topped $100,000 for the first time, according to Joyce. Yet out-of-state horses appear to be coming. Koltiska said that the stable area at Energy Downs, which opens on May 25, is “packed full” with horses coming from surrounding states, including Colorado, where the state’s only track, Arapahoe Park, cancelled its live meet this year. She also said that stall applications for Wyoming Downs, which opens June 8, are running far ahead of previous years. “Trying to find stalls on the backside is a big problem, and that’s not a problem we have had in years,” she said. Plenty of options on the table The legislature began expressing concerns about the growth in the machines in the spring, shortly after the Thunder Plains group submitted its license application to the gambling commission. In that application, the group said it expected to operate as many as 1,200 machines at a variety of locations in the state, which could potentially increase the number of devices by 50 percent. This week, the developer of Thunder Plains, Cowboy Racing, announced that it had brought on 1/ST Racing to run the racing side of its operation. 1/ST owns Gulfstream Park in Florida and Santa Anita Park in Southern California, and its various affiliates specialize in simulcasting operations and bet-processing services. 1/ST also owns Golden Gate Fields in Northern California, a track that is scheduled to close this year, and two tracks in Maryland that will become state operating entities in the summer under legislation passed earlier this year. In a release announcing the joint operation, Cowboy Racing said 1/ST “will serve as the exclusive racing operator at Thunder Plains and will run a 16-day live racing meet overseeing related training, wagering, and hospitality operations.” One month after Thunder Plains submitted its application, the owners of Kentucky Downs announced that they had reached an agreement to buy Wyoming Downs with a partner, the Clairvest Group, a Toronto-based private equity company. Kentucky Downs paved the way for historical horse racing machines in Kentucky, and it now runs a seven-day meet in which total purse distribution this year will be $35 million, counting the state-mandated subsidies from the HHRs. While legislation in Kentucky explicitly carves out money for purses from HHR revenues, no such mandate exists in Wyoming. Instead, horsemen in the state negotiate with the tracks on purse outlays. “It’s not a huge issue right now, but some horsemen are questioning that,” said Charles Moore, the executive director of the gambling commission. While the racing commission and the state’s racing constituencies discussed a variety of options at the Thursday meeting for containing the growth of gambling in the state while simultaneously boosting racing participation and the sport’s popularity and economics, the commissioners also said that they will wait until the report commissioned by the legislature is complete before weighing any rule or policy changes. That report is expected to be completed by late fall, shortly after the 2024 racing season wraps up in Wyoming. The legislature will convene early in 2025, and the report is expected to lead to the introduction of legislation that could impact the racing and gambling landscape in the state for years. “I still believe there are a lot of options out there that can make everybody happy,” said Nick Hughes, the owner of Sweetwater Downs. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.