Two New Jersey real-estate developers who were seeking approval to build casinos have suspended an advertising campaign supporting a casino referendum, they announced on Thursday.
The suspension of the campaign is an acknowledgement of the weak polling numbers in support of the referendum, which would have authorized two new casinos in the northern part of the state. A recent poll showed that 58 percent of voters were opposed to the referendum, with 35 percent approving.
Handle figures at California tracks slumped more than 11 percent in August, with declines at Del Mar, on the Northern California fair circuit, and the Los Alamitos nighttime mixed meeting, according to figures announced at Thursday’s California Horse Racing Board meeting.
The declines left year-to-date figures through August down 3.6 percent compared with 2015 at all state racetracks.
The California Horse Racing Board postponed the allocation of 2017 racing dates for Golden Gate Fields and the Northern California fair circuit after relevant parties failed to reach a resolution at the racing board’s dates committee meeting on Wednesday.
At Thursday’s meeting of the entire racing board, chairman Chuck Winner said dates may be allocated in October at the next racing board meeting. Further discussions between racing board and Northern California track officials are expected in coming weeks.
Del Mar will offer a jackpot-style pick six, with a portion of the pool dedicated to the holder of a single winning ticket, at its 15-day autumn meeting from Nov. 11 to Dec. 4.
The track received approval of the newly structured wager at Thursday’s California Horse Racing Board meeting at Los Alamitos.
This is the first time a Southern California track has offered a pick six bet with a jackpot provision, emulating a similar bet popular at Gulfstream Park in Florida.
Officials with the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and the racing industry met with representatives of the IRS and Treasury Department on Monday in Washington in an ongoing discussion over proposed changes to how parimutuel winnings are taxed, NTRA officials confirmed on Thursday.
Century Casinos Europe GmbH was awarded the right to build a new gaming and horse-racing facility in the Edmonton, Alberta, area. There were four final bids submitted to Horse Racing Alberta to build a facility that will replace Northlands Park, which was slated to close at the end of this year. Century currently owns and operates Century Downs, a gaming and horse-racing facility in Balzac, a suburb of Calgary.
Grade 1 winner Plenty of Grace has died at age 29, and will be buried at Darby Dan Farm in Lexington, Ky., where she was bred.
Racing from ages 2 to 6, Plenty of Grace won the Grade 1 Yellow Ribbon Invitational at Santa Anita during her sophomore campaign in 1990, and also won the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup at Keeneland, then a Grade 2 event. After a multiple-graded-stakes-placed 4-year-old season, she returned the next year to win the Grade 2 Diana Handicap and the New York Handicap. She was the first of Darby Dan's four homebred winners of the Diana, now a Grade 1 event.
Good weather and larger fields contributed to the average daily handle at the recently concluded Emerald Downs meet increasing by 16.8 percent over 2015.
The daily all-sources live handle average for the 70-day meet was $975,434, up from $835,037. The total handle for the meet was $68,280,380. Ontrack figures were not released by Emerald.
The average field size of 7.43 horses was up considerably from 6.86 in 2015.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has signed a bill allowing for wagering on the steeplechase races held at Far Hills, but the signature came too late to offer betting on the Oct. 15 card this year, according to officials with the company that has been hired to administer the wagering.
