Pat Cummings, the executive director of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, told an audience at the Global Symposium on Racing on Wednesday that bettors have manipulated U.S. pari-mutuels pools “more than 50 times” in the past six months. The question is, What to do about it?
NYRA, through its NYRA Bets Holdings, a subsidiary of NYRA Bets, has acquired a minority equity ownership position in Game of Silks, a derivative gaming platform that mirrors the real world of Thoroughbred horse ownership.
The National Thoroughbred Racing Association during the next congressional session will be lobbying to protect existing tax breaks for horse owners and to secure funding for organizations that provide aftercare for retired horses, the president of the NTRA said at the Global Symposium on Racing on Wednesday morning.
A collection of sports-betting operators appearing on a Tuesday afternoon panel at the Global Symposium on Racing urged the racing industry to quickly embrace fixed-odds betting as a way to keep pace with the meteoric growth of sports betting in the United States, although they also acknowledged that the prospect is more complicated than a simple decision.
The two opening speakers at the Global Symposium on Racing used their 30 minutes at the microphone to urge racing to unite behind both the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority and the idea that racing should begin to publicly stress its merits, rather than focusing on its shortcomings.
Patrick Reilly, a former practicing farrier who is the chief of farrier services at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Clinical Studies at the New Bolton Center, has been appointed to fill a vacated seat on the Racetrack Safety Standing Committee of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, according to HISA.
The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, an organization that currently sits in constitutional limbo, will both open and close this year’s Global Symposium on Racing, held annually in Tucson, Arizona, beginning on Tuesday.
Total wagering on U.S. Thoroughbred races declined 4.5 percent in November compared to the same month in 2021, according to numbers released by Equibase on Monday, continuing a string of weakening betting numbers over the past several months.
Jack Owens, a longtime Thoroughbred owner and breeder and former chairman of the Thoroughbred Owners of California, died on Nov. 21 of a heart attack, according to a statement released by the TOC on Thursday.
The short-term fate of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority rests in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, while the long-term fate of the fledgling organization may lie in the hands of the Supreme Court.
