Status of Arlington meet remains in limbo following Illinois Racing Board meeting

The status of a 2020 racing season at Arlington remained uncertain after a regularly scheduled monthly meeting of the Illinois Racing Board on Friday.

Arlington was supposed to open its race meet on May 1 but remains shuttered, with empty stables, because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Arlington president Tony Petrillo during the virtual meeting told the IRB that the track was not “pulling the plug” on the season. But the plans and protocols for reopening that Petrillo said Arlington had asked state and local officials to consider focused solely on racing with spectators, something that seems highly unlikely anytime in the near future given the coronavirus rules in force throughout the state, especially the Chicago area. Petrillo said spectator-free racing, for the time being, wouldn’t work at Arlington.

“Without the [off-track-betting parlor] network up and fully functioning that remains impossible,” Petrillo said. “It’s not feasible for Arlington due to high cost structure.”

Arlington, which is owned by Churchill Downs Inc., currently is generating a pittance for purses through the TwinSpires account-wagering platform, but OTBs have been shut since mid-March and no other purse revenue is incoming. Illinois tracks fund their purse accounts almost wholly through betting handle. Hawthorne Racecourse and Fairmount Park applied for casino licenses last summer, but Arlington, to the consternation of local horsemen, declined to apply for such a license. Casinos attached to racetracks pay a percentage of revenue to purses and in many jurisdictions heavily fund racing.

Petrillo said a survey of Illinois horsemen suggested that as of Thursday only 550 horses would be ready to ship into the Arlington backstretch if it opened, too few to conduct a race meeting. Petrillo also said the survey suggested horses and their human caretakers would arrive from six different states, and that such a diverse, simultaneous influx of a population into a relatively small space concerned local health officials.

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Petrillo said that state officials informed Arlington that even spectator-free racing wouldn’t be possible until the track’s area reached Phase 4 of a five-phase reopening plan outlined by J.B. Pritzker, the Illinois governor. Barring setbacks, most of Illinois is moving into Phase 3 of the plan at the end of May.

Jim Miller, director of publicity for Hawthorne, later testified that state officials suggested Hawthorne could restart its harness-racing meet during Phase 3 or Phase 2. “At no time were we told we’d have to wait until Phase 4 to return to racing,” Miller said.

John Walsh, Hawthorne’s assistant general manager, told the IRB that Hawthorne still planned to conduct a fall Thoroughbred meet, with purses forecast right now to average $90,000 per day.

Hawthorne has been urging the IRB, in the absence of a commitment from Arlington to race this summer, to amend the 2020 dates-award order and begin directing so called dark-host money from Arlington to Hawthorne. Dark host refers to the track that collects most of the revenue generated from simulcast wagers. The board, however, voted unanimously to retain Arlington’s dark-host status, at least for the next several weeks, though the designation is virtually meaningless with no wagering at Illinois tracks or OTBs.

David McCaffrey, executive director for the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, read a statement he said had been formulated Thursday by the ITHA board. The statement asked the IRB to insist Arlington agree to run at least a 30-day 2020 meet, abandon all open stakes races and direct that purse money to overnight races, and open its stable area and training facilities at least 30 days before the start of the meet. Barring such a commitment, the ITHA said the IRB should shift dark-host status from Arlington to Hawthorne. No IRB board members or staff, however, responded or followed up on the ITHA’s demand.

The ITHA and Arlington were supposed to have agreed on a contract for the 2020 meet by Jan. 1 (though Arlington disputes this section of the law – to the extent they filed a 27-page brief on why it’s incorrect) but have failed to come to terms and haven’t met in recent weeks despite officially being in IRB-mandated mediation.

Hawthorne, meanwhile, said it has been in regular contact with state and local health officials, the Illinois Department of Agriculture, and the governor’s office, and stands ready to resume its interrupted Standardbred season – racing spectator-free – as soon as it receives permission.

The ITHA and Hawthorne announced earlier this week that Hawthorne had agreed to forego taking about $3.4 million in recapture funds out of its purse account. Recapture refers to the Illinois law whereby tracks “recapture” money that shifted from ontrack wagers to out-of-state wagers when full-card simulcasting was introduced to Illinois in 1994. Arlington is due about $4.5 million in recapture this year.

One IRB commissioner, Thomas McCauley, pressed Petrillo hard on Arlington’s commitment to racing this year.

“To me, it’s hard to reconcile why these racetracks in other jurisdictions can operate, and you can’t respond to when you might operate and under what conditions,” McCauley said.

McCauley proposed scheduling another IRB meeting before the next monthly meeting on June 23 to discuss possible reassignment of dark-host status once OTBs begin to operate and generate revenue. There was no public follow-up on McCauley’s suggestion.

Mike Campbell, president of the ITHA, said during the public-comment period at the beginning of the meeting, that Illinois horsemen were “waiting to know with certainty when and if racing will take place at Arlington.” Even after Friday’s IRB meeting, they still are waiting.