Racing & Gaming Conference

Pat Brown, the director of The Racing and Gaming Conference at Saratoga, knows what makes an agenda tick. He has seen his fair share of seemingly endless Power Points, glazed-over eyes and the attendees that surf the Internet in an attempt to multitask. The best way to combat the conference malaise? Just a healthy dose of fun. "I've spent over 40 years of in and out of government, thinking about and writing about the gaming and horse racing industry," said Brown, a former advisor to New York's Governor Mario Cuomo...

Despite COVID shutdowns, a total of $21.52 billion was wagered legally on sports in the U.S. in 2020, about twice what was bet on horse racing, and the gap will be even greater this year and for years to come. Sports betting is growing exponentially and an argument can be made that some of its success is coming at horse racing's expense. It's surely siphoning off dollars that otherwise might be available to racing's pari-mutuel pools and it has to be drawing existing and potential customers away from racing. Yet,...