Racetracks survived, and, in some cases, thrived, during the height of the pandemic last year by capitalizing on television and account wagering and modifying racing schedules to better position themselves in the simulcast marketplace, track executives said on a Wednesday afternoon panel at the Global Symposium on Racing.
Racing industry conferences have been dominated over the past five years with discussions of fixed-odds betting and sports wagering, and the Global Symposium on Racing was no different. Much of the discussion has centered on the opportunities available to racing in partnering with sports-book operations and abandoning, at least in part, the 100-year-old practice in the U.S. of restricting betting on racing to pari-mutuel wagering, along with the drawbacks and potential pitfalls to those decisions.
A panel of top racing officials discussing field size on Wednesday morning at the Global Symposium on Racing in Tucson, Ariz., were uniformly critical of a practice that has become common in racing offices across the country over the past decade – giving horsemen a smorgasbord of choices for overnight races.
Executives of the U.S. racing industry’s leading racetracks said at an afternoon panel at the Global Symposium on Racing that they see several reasons for optimism about the growth prospects of horse racing over the next several years, citing industry progress in reducing injuries and the growth of sports betting across the country.
A proposed rule to restrict purses in claiming races to 1.6 times the claiming price was rescinded from a tranche of regulations submitted on Monday by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority to the Federal Trade Commission, officials of HISA confirmed on Tuesday.
State racing commissions will continue to collect race-day samples and adjudicate post-race positives throughout 2022 under an amended timeline for the implementation of new national racing rules outlined by the chairman of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority on Tuesday at the Global Symposium on Racing in Tucson, Ariz.
Total handle on Thoroughbred races held at U.S. racetracks was up marginally in November when compared to the same month of 2019, prior to the coronavirus pandemic disrupting economic and social conditions across the world.
The attorney for Bob Baffert said in a statement released late Friday that elements in the urine analysis of Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit conformed with the administration of the drug betamethasone in a skin ointment, solidifying a line of argument Baffert’s defense will use when attempting to get the positive thrown out.
Panel discussions and presentations at the University of Arizona Global Symposium on Racing next week will be available on live-streams for a fee, a racing broadcast company announced Monday.
Michael Del Giudice is retiring from his role as chairman of the New York Racing Association’s Board of Directors and will be replaced by Marc Holliday, the company announced in a press release Wednesday.
