wagering

Purse levels for maiden special weight (MSW) races at Kentucky's two summer meets, Ellis Park and Kentucky Downs, are projected to remain level this year compared to 2025. At Ellis, that means $100,000 per MSW race over the course of a 25-date meet in July and August, and at Kentucky Downs, the MSW purses will be $170,000 over seven dates in August and September. The disclosures were made by representatives of each track at the Apr. 1 meeting of the Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund (KTDF) advisory committee. Although MSW purse...

Keeneland's Spring Meet will feature expanded national television coverage of major races during the first two Saturdays of the season, and debut a range of digital tools and wagering enhancements designed to provide horseplayers with information and betting opportunities, the track said via a press release on Thursday. Fans can watch the entire meet through Keeneland's livestream, available on Keeneland.com, the Keeneland YouTube channel and the Keeneland Race Day app. Throughout the Spring Meet, racing fans can turn to FanDuel TV for daily coverage beginning at noon ET. In addition,...

It's a busy time for NTRA President and CEO Tom Rooney as there are some important issues facing horse racing that are being addressed in the nation's capital. Most notably, is the provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill that allows gamblers to deduct only 90 percent of their losses from their winnings. If nothing is done to change that, it will likely have a serious impact on the sport and drive many big bettors out of the game. Bills have been introduced that would allow gamblers to again write...

Kentucky's potentially landmark fixed-odds bill has been voted out the state House with an easy 79-15 margin and now heads to the state Senate. Some of the key elements in the revised version this sweeping bill include a new mandate establishing a minimum amount of at least $1,000 that a bettor can win through fixed-odds wagering, language to essentially decouple wagering providers from the prediction market (which is the ability for bettors to make speculative bets on the outcomes of future events), and language barring a cap being placed on...

In the ongoing battle between HISA and Churchill Downs Inc., HISA fired the latest shot Tuesday, ordering Churchill to pay it $5,024,848.56, plus interest in the amount of $250,631.77. In documents released Tuesday by HISA, the authority charged that if CDI does not comply with the order it will no longer be able to simulcast races from any of its tracks to out-of-state locations starting Mar. 27. The legislation that created HISA allows it to revoke a tracks simulcasting privileges if HISA believes a track is in violation of its...

Oaklawn Park will support a new purse incentive designed to reward horsemen who support the track for the remainder of the 2025-2026 racing season, Oaklawn announced Saturday. Beginning with Condition Book 4 released March 19, 2026, the incentive will apply to the 25 remaining scheduled race days of the meet and, per the release, "will reward races that attract larger fields." Under the new structure, Allowance and Maiden Special Weight races will receive an additional $5,000 in purse money for each official starter above nine betting interests, except for stake...

So-called prediction markets have become all the rage across a wide swath of topics, from election results to gas prices to the amount of snowfall might occur in a given place. The Kentucky Derby and horse racing at large? That topic was the subject of a panel entitled 'Prediction Markets and Wagering: An Emerging Threat To Horse Racing and Interstate Horseracing Act Revenue' during Thursday's session of the National HBPA Conference at Oaklawn Park. Speakers agreed that prediction markets have the ability to dwarf even sports betting in America. The...

Despite several cold and snowy weather-related cancellations, more race days and higher available and paid purses were amongst the positive economic trends year over year for the month of February. 230 race days (+5.02%) led to over $79,562,309 (+8.57%) of paid out purses last month spread over 2,001 races (+4.76%). Field size remained largely the same, dropping just slightly from 7.98 in 2025 to 7.78 this year while wagering was also down a bit from $771,126,687 to $756,813,375 (-1.86%). Average wagering per race day was the most noticeable decrease, with...

The judge overseeing the pending class-action federal lawsuit over computer-assisted wagering (CAW) on Friday put a halt to "discovery" in the case, meaning that for the time being, the small-scale bettor who initiated the litigation back in October won't be able to go forward with the process of trying to gather evidence from some of the nation's biggest tracks and bet-takers who are named as defendants in the suit. The order by Judge Joan Azrack was entered into the electronic docket late in the afternoon of Feb. 20 without any...

Last year a move to decouple Florida track/casinos from the requirement to conduct racing was passed in the Florida House, but a united horse group stopped it in the Florida Senate. The wolf was at the door and they got rid of it. This year the wolf is back. Churchill Downs says Fair Grounds without a casino will close. The wolf is at the door there too, and at every track without coupling. The coupling of tracks with casino/alternate gaming was a case of leverage. The casinos wanted in and...

Last November, Democratic Kentucky state representative Matt Lehman told the TDN he was considering legislative intervention in an effort to curb computer assisted wagering (CAW) play in the state to a more equitable standard for all players. The debate around CAW players typically surrounds the edge they wield over regular gamblers thanks to their use of sophisticated technologies that allow them to precisely read the markets and to place massive wagers across many pools in the final seconds of betting--which can lead to extreme late odds changes--as well as the...

A three-judge panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has sided with the advance-deposit wagering (ADW) platform TwinSpires in a nearly year-old federal lawsuit against the Michigan Gaming Control Board (MGCB). In an opinion issued Dec. 16, the federal appeals court agreed with the Churchill Downs, Inc. (CDI) subsidiary that operates TwinSpires by ruling that the Interstate Horseracing Act (IHA) of 1978 preempts a Michigan licensing requirement requiring that ADW providers be linked to a licensed racetrack and live race meeting. Back on Feb. 19,...