Bucking what most racing officials consider a beneficial trend, race days at U.S. racetracks increased in the month of September compared with the same month last year, but demand for racing continued to wane, with total handle at U.S. racetracks dropping 6.3 percent, according to figures released on Tuesday by Equibase.

Television Games Network, the horseracing broadcaster and account-wagering company, has re-signed Keeneland Racecourse and Del Mar Thoroughbred Club to exclusive television agreements through 2016 and has begun asking tracks to commit to high-definition broadcasts as part of a push to get an HD channel slot on satellite and cable networks, TVG officials said on Thursday.

The Stronach Group, the private company that owns Laurel Park and Pimlico Racecourse in Maryland, has joined with Caesars Entertainment and a slew of other investors in an application to build and operate a casino in Baltimore.

Remi Bellocq, chief executive of the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association for the past 10 years, is leaving the position to take a job as the executive director of an equine program at Bluegrass Community and Technical College in Lexington, the National HBPA said.

Churchill Downs Inc. has notified the Jockeys’ Guild that it will not renew a four-year agreement that expires at the end of the year providing for payments to the Guild from the company’s four tracks, according to Churchill and the guild.

New instant racing gaming machines will keep operating at Kentucky Downs after a Kentucky Court of Appeals denied gaming opponents’ motion for an emergency injunction.

Judge Glenn Acree denied an emergency request by a lobbying group, the Family Foundation of Kentucky, to stop the machines, saying the group had not shown that allowing the machines presented immediate and irreparable injury. But a scheduled three-judge hearing into the Family Foundation’s request for a routine injunction is still pending. That could take place in October.

An attorney for Morris Bailey, the real estate developer who is operating Monmouth Park in New Jersey under an unsigned lease with the state, contends New Jersey has violated conditions of a memorandum of understanding incorporating the lease, according to state racing officials.

A Kentucky Court of Appeals judge Tuesday afternoon indicated that he will rule soon on whether to issue an injunction that would prevent Kentucky Downs from taking bets on gambling machines, according to an official with the group that filed the request for injunction.

The Kentucky Equine Drug Research Council has issued a recommendation to the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission to ban the use of so-called “adjunct bleeder medications” on race days and restrict the administration of raceday furosemide to commission veterinarians.

Racetracks that received subsidies from slot machines in 2010 generated on average only two-fifths of the betting that non-subsidized tracks generated even though they distributed nearly equivalent levels of average daily purses, according to unofficial statistics assembled by Daily Racing Form.

The statistics were developed for 28 subsidized tracks and 37 non-subsidized tracks in North America for 2010 only.