Texas sends cease-and-desist to TwinSpires
The chairman of the Texas Racing Commission said Wednesday that a response to a cease-and-desist order the commission recently sent to Churchill Downs Inc. regarding the entry of the company’s account-wagering operation into the state is being reviewed by the office of the state’s governor and its attorney general.
The chairman, Robert C. Pate, a judge, said that the state officials had begun a review of the response but did not offer any other specifics.
“We will continue to monitor the situation and keep the industry up to date,” Pate said.
Although it is unclear when Churchill’s ADW, Twinspires.com, began accepting wagers from Texas residents, commission officials indicated that they prepared the cease-and-desist order within days of determining that TwinSpires was operating in Texas.
It is also unclear if TwinSpires has complied with the cease-and-desist order. The company has not responded to multiple requests for comment from Daily Racing Form on the entry of TwinSpires into Texas over the course of the past five days, and on Wednesday, after the commission confirmed the cease-and-desist order, a Churchill spokesperson responded to a list of questions from DRF by saying “we cannot comment on this matter at this time.”
David Holmes, interim executive director of the commission, testified Wednesday at a regular meeting of the commission that account wagering was clearly illegal in the state of Texas.
“As you know, Texas law tightly restricts how wagering can be accepted by someone in Texas, and that includes by telephone or computing device,” Holmes said.
Texas is one of the largest markets in the country, but parimutuel wagering is limited to licensed racetracks. Racing constituencies both inside and outside of the state have long pushed for the state to liberalize its wagering rules to allow account wagering.
Texas also is one of the few large states in the United States that has not legalized sports betting.
Earlier this year, TwinSpires prevailed in a case against the Michigan Gaming Control Board that arose when the company continued to accept wagers from Michigan residents after the board told all account-wagering companies to cease operations at the beginning of 2025. The judge in the case issued a summary judgment in early January preventing the gambling commission from revoking TwinSpires’s license.
Although Churchill had argued in the case that bets through TwinSpires were not accepted in Michigan, but rather in Oregon, where the company’s bet-processing network is hubbed, the final judgment did not address that argument. Instead, it relied on a conclusion that a requirement in Michigan tying account-wagering licenses to a licensed racetrack in the state “interferes” with the federal Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978.
The case was closely watched in the racing industry due to Churchill’s legal arguments that its wagers were not accepted in the state where residents lived. Under that interpretation, TwinSpires and other account-wagering companies could operate in states such as Texas that had bans on account wagering.
Tracy Sheffield, executive director of the Texas Thoroughbred Association, told the commission that her organization opposed the entry of TwinSpires into the state.
“This is doing nothing for Texas,” Sheffield said. “It is dangerous to the industry, to tracks, and the state.”
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