Kentucky legislature passes ban on 'gray machines'

The Kentucky legislature passed a bill on Tuesday banning so-called “gray machines,” a type of gambling device, with the backing of the state’s racing industry.

The bill was a significant source of controversy throughout this year’s legislature. The devices have proliferated at convenience stores throughout Kentucky over the past year. Critics, including the racing industry, called them “unregulated gambling devices,” while supporters, including a coalition formed by convenience-store owners and other business operators, called them “skill games.”

The bill will now be sent to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who has indicated he supports the ban.

Supporters and critics spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on television ads over the past two months to turn public opinion on the effort. Opponents of the ban focused much of their attention on Churchill Downs Inc., which, like all Kentucky racetrack owners, operates thousands of similar devices called “historical horse racing machines.” Those devices were formally legalized by the legislature two years ago.

Historical horse racing machines are big business for Kentucky tracks, which are the only entities eligible to apply for licenses to operate the devices. The rapid proliferation of the gray machines had become a competitive threat to the operation of the machines.

The Kentucky racing industry mobilized its lobbying coalition, the Kentucky Equine Education Project, to support the legislation banning the machines.

“KEEP, along with many other organizations, worked closely with legislators to ensure that they understood the negative impact of illegal gray machines on families, communities, and on Kentucky’s legal forms of gaming,” KEEP said in a statement released Tuesday night.

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