The Maine Gambling Control Board has approved a deal to sell a casino in Oxford to Churchill Downs Inc., allowing Churchill to close the $160 million transaction, the company announced on Wednesday.

The casino, which opened in June 2012, is the third standalone casino that Churchill has bought in the past several years. Its two other standalone casinos are in Mississippi.

The Oxford casino is located about 40 miles northwest of Portland, Maine, and includes a 25,000 square-foot gambling floor, with 790 slot machines and 22 table games.

Phil O'Hara, the executive director for racetrack development for Daily Racing Form, has been hired as the executive director of the Mid Atlantic Cooperative, which negotiates simulcasting agreements on behalf of 20 racetracks, the cooperative announced on Tuesday.

O'Hara, who will remain in his role at DRF, will fill a position that has been vacant since June 1 because of the retirement of Martin Lieberman, an attorney. O'Hara has a 30-year career in racing that includes positions at Penn National Gaming Inc. and a stint as president of Equibase Company.

Wagering on U.S. races fell in June of this year compared with the same month last year, according to figures released last week by Equibase, but race days fell at a greater rate, leading to higher handle per race day.

Total wagering on U.S. races during June was $934.15 million, down 1.6 percent compared with wagering of $949.01 million during June of last year. Race days fell 3.5 percent, from 596 in June 2012 to 575 in June this year. That resulted in a 2.1 percent jump in wagering per race day, from $1.592 million last June to $1.625 million this year.

Liz Bracken, the vice president of simulcasting for the New York Racing Association, has accepted an associate coordinator’s position with the University of Arizona’s Race Track Industry Program in Tucson, Ariz., the program announced on Monday.

Bracken, who started in NYRA’s simulcasting department 16 years ago, will teach several courses for the race track program and help administer the program and its annual Symposium on Racing. She will begin her job on Aug. 16, the program said, in the middle of NYRA’s popular Saratoga season.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Racing Medication and Testing Consortium advised racing commissions on Tuesday that two products being sold by online pharmacies should be treated as Class A prohibited medications despite the dubious performance-enhancing claims made by the manufacturers of the products.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – It has a name like something out of a spy novel or from within a deep, dark recess of the federal government. In the cat-and-mouse game of catching cheaters armed with the latest chemical substances, that’s probably appropriate.

Two top representatives of racing organizations in Japan and Ireland are scheduled to deliver the “featured presentations” at this year’s Jockey Club Round Table on Matters Pertaining to Racing on Aug. 11 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., according to The Jockey Club.

Betfair, the British betting-exchange operator that owns Television Games Network, had a net loss of $101.4 million in the fiscal year 2013, according to the company, a sharp reversal from net income of $52 million posted by the company in fiscal year 2012.

Revenue for the fiscal year was $592.1 million, nearly identical to revenue of $594.4 million in the previous fiscal year. But Betfair took a $126.1 million charge as an impairment on its “goodwill and other intangible assets,” steering the company into the red.

Jim Mulvihill, the former communications and parimutuel marketing manager at Fair Grounds in New Orleans, has been hired as the director of media and industry relations for the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, the NTRA announced Monday.

Mulvihill will fill the position left open when Eric Wing resigned several months ago to take a position as the director of communications for the New York Racing Association. Mulvihill will start at the NTRA on July 15 and be based in New York, the NTRA said.

Richard Kalm has been reappointed to a second term as Executive Director of the Michigan Gaming Control Board, the state’s regulatory body for horse racing.

Kalm serves as Michigan’s de facto racing commissioner, granted the authority by an executive order from former governor Jennifer Granholm, who dissolved the state’s original Office of Racing Commissioner in January 2010. Prior to that order, the state’s horse racing operations were conducted under the Department of Agriculture.