Radical change regarding how the racing industry deals with computerized automated wagering will be difficult to implement due to the industry’s financial difficulties and the theoretical nature of the benefits to other horseplayers, according to speakers on a panel dealing with CAWs at the Racing Commissioners International conference in Indianapolis on Wednesday. Speakers on the panel, which was called “Consumer Confidence in a World of Computer Assisted Wagering,” largely agreed that CAWs remain an “issue to be managed,” rather than a target for restrictions, due to their outsized presence in Thoroughbred racing’s betting pools and the difficulty of dislodging them from the pools without significant economic repercussions. “In my view, CAW is not a problem to be solved or something that needs to be severely restricted or limited,” said Scott Chaney, the executive director of the California Horse Racing Board. “Instead, it’s a reality in racing in which you deal with it by trying to figure out what is the best long-term approach to them for the health of horse racing.” CAW players have become one of the most controversial elements of Thoroughbred racing over the past 10 years, with an increasing number of bettors assailing the influence of the players on payouts and late odds changes. Experts believe as many as two dozen CAW players are currently active in the pools. They likely account for somewhere between 25 to 35 percent of all industry handle, according to Pat Cummings, the executive director of the National Racing Alliance, who has studied CAW betting extensively and moderated the panel. :: KENTUCKY DERBY 2026: Top contenders, point standings, prep schedule, news, and more Jim Goodman, the director of wagering development for Keeneland in Lexington, reiterated during the panel that decisions he made prior to the track’s spring meet to raise the minimums for the superfecta and several pick three bets were made to mitigate the influence of CAWs on those betting pools. But Goodman also said that most everyday horseplayers are not aware of the decisions that Keeneland makes behind the scenes when dealing with the rate that the track charges to the CAW players, the vast majority of which negotiate directly with tracks on the price for their signals. Goodman said that he regularly modifies those rates after reviewing the players’ activity and success rate in the track’s pools in an attempt to limit the rebate that the CAW players receive from their bet-processing partners. Goodman also said he was concerned about the sheer volume of misinformation on social-media sites regarding the influence of CAWs and their operation. “Do not believe what you see on the internet,” Goodman said. “There is a lot of disinformation, misinformation, and ignorance out there.” Chaney said that given the amount of misinformation – he said the CHRB regularly receives complaints from disgruntled horseplayers who are, “for lack of a better word, unhinged” – that the racing industry probably needs to do a much better job communicating with the public on the impact and operations of CAW players. Cummings said that even if the information is not accurate, it still has a massive impact on “consumer confidence,” the term that was explicitly included in the title of the panel to underline how CAW play is discouraging the sport’s everyday players. “A lot of times, the specifics don’t really matter,” Cummings said. “The impression has been left on the customer.” :: Access morning workout reports straight from the tracks and get an edge with DRF Clocker Reports Chaney also stressed that the racing industry, especially in California, does not, in most cases, have the margins to experiment with restricting CAW play, especially when no one yet has evidence that limiting CAW play will result in immediate gains in handle. “Our wagering ecosystem is increasingly fragile and cannot withstand an experiment that would lead to a significant reduction in CAW activity,” said Chaney. “It’s only theory that the landing spot for handle will be higher than it started, and it’s complete speculation how long this will take, and, to be honest, even if it will occur.” Pending lawsuits and legal matters A panel of attorneys and racing officials provided updates on a number of lawsuits and legal issues that are currently pending in courts, including a recent move by Churchill Downs Inc. to offer betting through its advanced-deposit wagering platform, Twinspires.com, to residents of Texas, which explicitly outlaws betting over mobile devices and the internet. David Holmes, the executive director of the Texas Racing Commission, said that the state’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against CDI in state court after the company did not comply with a cease-and-desist order issued by the commission. CDI then pulled its signals from Texas, but the company also was successful in moving the lawsuit from state court to federal court, Holmes said. “We’re all in a wait-and-see mode to see how that case progresses,” Holmes said. Several officials pressed Holmes for more detail, including Eric Hamelback, the chief executive officer of the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, who said from the audience that CDI’s actions have caused a lot of concerns for horsemen and “that regulators need to know more about what is going on here.” Although Holmes said that he believed that CDI entered Texas explicitly to force a federal case that could potentially weaken state restrictions on account-wagering activity, he also said he could not comment further, citing the ongoing litigation. :: Subscribe to the DRF Post Time Email Newsletter: Get the news you need to play today's races!  Unsanctioned racing a growing problem Raids on “bush tracks,” or unsanctioned and unlicensed racing operations, have made headlines several times over the past three years. According to a presentation by Amanda Kadilak, the government affairs liaison for the American Horse Council, the practice of holding an unsanctioned day of racing is growing in frequency, and the risks to the racing industry are growing along with it. Foremost among those threats is the transmission of viruses into the herds of horses at racetracks. Kadilak said the unsanctioned meets do not conduct any testing for transmissible diseases, and that regulators need to be especially vigilant on horses leaving a racing and training facility to run in a race at one of the meets, since those horses could return with a highly contagious and dangerous disease. The unsanctioned meets almost exclusively feature Quarter Horse races. Kadilak said that social-media sites are allowing the meets to advertise quickly to large number of attendees, and at the same time videos posted to social-media of breakdowns at the meets or unsavory practices are having impacts on the entire racing industry’s social license. “Most viewers do not know where the footage came from,” Kadilak said. “The average viewer does not distinguish sanctioned from unsanctioned events, and so the reputational harm lands on the entire industry.” HISA’s use of artificial intelligence constantly improving Appropriate to her audience, Lisa Lazarus, the chief executive of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, gave a presentation on how HISA is using data and artificial intelligence to assist regulatory veterinarians, the commission employees who conduct pre-race exams at tracks, among other duties. Most of the initial work has gone into the development of a data display product called In-Sight, a comprehensive collection of records related to individual horses that regulatory veterinarians can use to identify potential risk factors. What’s relatively new, according to Lazarus, is the use of artificial-intelligence algorithms to refine the data. HISA’s current AI system runs around the clock and generates a risk profile for all horses entered to race that day at 8 a.m., Lazarus said. “We’re constantly able to train the system to better identify risk,” Lazarus said. “It’s always getting better at figuring out which factors pose greater risk.” :: Access the most trusted data and information in horse racing! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. In answer to a question from audience member Scott Chaney, the CHRB executive director, Lazarus said, however, that AI is never going to replace the regulatory veterinarian in making the final call on whether a horse is unfit to race. “You always need that vet, you always need that human there that can take a look at all the factors,” Lazarus said. New trends in drug testing A panel examining current developments in the drug-testing environment produced several new promising trends, including the results of a study that seem to indicate that a horse’s genetic makeup contains markers for its risk of suffering fractures. Dr. Mary Robinson, a researcher who is also the director of the University of Pennsylvania Equine Toxicological Laboratory, said that she and a colleague recently conducted a study of the horse’s genome that was able to identify 11 significant genetic markers indicating a risk for musculoskeletal fracture. Refining that data led to the conclusion that a horse’s genome could predict that certain horses have a risk factor for a fracture twice that other horses. “I’m super excited about this work,” Robinson said. Robinson has also developed a test that identifies the most common “vector” that would be used to insert a gene into a horse, a process that is known as “gene-doping.” While it is unclear whether gene-doping is going on in horse racing right now, it’s considered a new frontier in doping. In addition, Petra Hartmann, the director of Industrial Labs in Colorado, said that she had received kits of a new product called firstFlagX developed by a New Zealand company that has been shown in testing to be able to detect powerful long-term performance enhancers like anabolic steroids and selective androgen receptor modulators, known as SARMs. The kits will be tested over the next several months at Industrial Labs to determine if they would be effective in detecting the substances and to validate the testing processes, Hartmann said after the panel.   “This kit theoretically opens up a whole range of possibilities of detecting compounds that may be escaping detection,” Hartmann said. :: Get the Inside Track with the FREE DRF Morning Line Email Newsletter. Subscribe now.  Finally, Dr. Michael Hardy, the executive director of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium and the Acting Chief Science Officer of the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit, said that the RMTC has begun working on a program that will allow supplement makers to elect to go through a certification process. The program will be modeled on similar programs that have been in use for human supplements for two decades, Hardy said. Supplements are not subject to FDA approval and undergo no official regulatory testing before being sold. In addition, differing quality-control procedures at supplement manufacturers can sometimes lead to tainted products, including the inclusion of banned or regulated drugs that can land a trainer a hot water. Hardy stressed that the use of any product that receives certification will not absolve a trainer from any responsibility while using the product. But the RMTC plans to provide information on its website that will show which product numbers in a supplement batch had been tested under the RMTC’s program. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.