Instant Racing shut down in Wyoming

The attorney general of Wyoming has ruled that Instant Racing gambling machines at the state’s racetracks and offtrack betting parlors violate the state’s prohibition on slot machines, a decision that could immediately affect the operations of Wyoming Downs and have an impact on the operation of the machines in other states as well.

The opinion, issued on Friday by Attorney General Peter Michael, led the Wyoming Pari-Mutuel Commission to issue an order for the gambling machines to be put out of operation by last Sunday night. The machines have been installed at Wyoming Downs and a network of the track’s OTBs around the sparsely populated state. Wyoming Downs has complied with the order.

Wyoming Downs first installed the machines in 2003, but the machines were declared illegal by a state supreme-court ruling in 2006. Two years ago, however, the state legislature passed a bill granting pari-mutuel license holders the right to operate the machines, stating that the machines were legal as long the games “afford the opportunity for the exercise of skill or judgment where the outcome is not completely controlled by chance alone.”

The machines are called Instant Racing machines or historical-racing machines by their manufacturers. They use the results of previously run races to generate payouts to patrons. Some states, such as Arkansas and Kentucky, have stated that the operation of the machines makes them legal under parimutuel statutes. In Kentucky, that definition is being challenged in a closely watched case brought by a conservative anti-gambling group that has argued that the games violate a constitutional prohibition on slot machines.

Though the Wyoming attorney general’s opinion does not have any effect on judiciary proceedings in other states, the opinion stated that the machines are not strictly parimutuel if the payouts rely on a random-number generator, a decision that could be cited in arguments before other courts. In this case, the opinion said that a bonus-round feature of the machines relied on a calculation that was strictly random, rendering the machines illegal.

“Just as giving someone a scratch-off ticket with each ‘live’ horse-race wager does not make scratch-off tickets legal in Wyoming, combining one historic parimutuel event with a series of non-parimutuel ‘bonus round’ events does not make the game themes lawful,” the attorney general wrote.

Manufacturers of the devices are likely to seek a workaround to the problem by eliminating the bonus-round feature, though that may make the games less attractive to gamblers by limiting the amount of money that is paid out.