wagering

Kentucky Derby Week kicks off Saturday night as Churchill Downs opens its 43-day Spring Meet. Kentucky Derby Day features 14 races, including seven stakes contests, with a betting menu that includes six Pick 5s, five Pick 4s and a mandatory payout in the 20-cent Derby City 6 Jackpot.   In 2024: The Pick 5 ending in the Kentucky Derby handled $4.4 million and returned $188,958. The Pick 4 ending in the Kentucky Derby handled $3.2 million and paid $18,300. The Derby City 6 Jackpot handled $2.3 million, with a payout...

Saturday's Santa Anita Derby day showed large increases over 2024 with the all sources handle totaling $22,388,003 and wagering on just the marquee race up by nearly 24 per cent, according to a press release by the track. Bolstered by a big turnout from the Derby Day 5K, the on-track attendance came in at 34,312, a seven per cent jump from last season. It was the largest turnout since 2018. Both the all sources handle and on track attendance are expected to finish the Classic Meet Sunday up by noteworthy...

Amid the embattled economics of horse racing, more and more attention has been placed upon Computer Assisted Wagering (CAW) players. One such focus has surrounded whether these behemoths of the betting pools are contributing their fair share back to the sport. That's the case certainly in California. Last year, the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) became the first regulator of a major racing jurisdiction to really dig down into the issue during a public hearing--one that later led to a published Q&A. The scrutiny that California has received hasn't always...

My first trip to a Thoroughbred racetrack came in the summer of 1961 at Ellis Park. At the time, I was 16, closing in on 17, and Kelso was four, closing in on the second of five consecutive Horse of the Year titles. Kelso never raced anywhere near Ellis, but his enduring class was such that he ranked among the sporting world's most recognizable heroes of the day. The New York Yankees' pinstriped pair of Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, in their pursuit of Babe Ruth's single-season home run record,...

1/ST CONTENT, a provider of content for North American horse racing, has broadened its international footprint by partnering with America Simulcast, a leading LATAM distributor, the company announced Tuesday. Sportbet, a major operator in the Ecuador space, is already under contract to integrate exclusive data and signals (broadcast and video streaming) from the partnership's content package. This deal has begun with commingling bets into the US pools via Sportbet's retail outlets, before adding fixed-odds betting and online channels in the coming weeks, scaling activity which provides an immediate validation of...

February 2025 had 219 race days compared to 252 from the same month a year ago (-13.10%) leading to decreases in most major economic fields. In the same month over month comparison, average field size was up (+3.63%) as was average wagering per race day (+5.85%) and average available purses per race day (+3.49%). Total wagering was down on U.S. races (-8.01%) along with available purses (-10.07%), purses paid (-11.26%), total races (-11.33%) and starts (-8.11%). The stats are similar year over year with minor decreases on wagering (-2.73%) and...

I am writing this letter in response to the article on the New York Times opinion piece, "In a Lengthy Guest Essay, the New York Times Advocates Ending Subsidies to Racing," published in the March 1 edition of the TDN. The Times article has caused me and our industry pain from the untruths that are spoken within it. But I'm going to take a slightly different view here--let's see what is true in the article and what we need to do about it as an industry. Light Up Racing is...

Duality Sports & Entertainment, in collaboration with the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA), will present Winner's Circle, a short documentary offering an exclusive look into the high-stakes world of professional horse race betting at the 2024 National Horseplayers Championship (NHC). The film debuts March 6, 2025, on Duality's YouTube channel, with exclusive insights and behind-the-scenes content available on NTRA.com. Each year, thousands of bettors put their skills, strategy, and bankroll to the test in qualifiers across the country, competing for a coveted spot at Caesars Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas....

Jim Benes, Cheryl McIntyre, and Rich Nilsen have been voted by their peers for induction into the NTRA National Horseplayers Championship Hall of Fame, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) announced Tuesday. These decorated handicappers represent the 11th class of NHC Hall of Fame inductees and will be recognized during the NHC Champions Dinner held Sunday, March 16 following the conclusion of the 26th NTRA National Horseplayers Championship (NHC) at the Horseshoe Las Vegas. "This is a huge honor," said Benes. "The Hall of Fame didn't exist when I started...

A bill that would authorize fixed odds betting on Thoroughbred and greyhound racing was filed Monday in the West Virginia Senate. If enacted, 5% of each licensee's adjusted gross wagering receipts from fixed odds wagering would go to a fund to supplement purses for Thoroughbreds and greyhounds. The money bet via Thoroughbred fixed odds would go to Thoroughbred purses; the greyhound revenue would be earmarked for greyhound purses. According to the text of Senate Bill 576, "Any content authorized for fixed odds wagering on horse races from West Virginia, or...

Mike Maloney had it good and he knew it. The author of "Betting With an Edge," the native Kentuckian played the races professionally and was able to make a good living doing so for nearly half a century. There was no trick to it. He bet a lot of money, as much as $14 million in one year, worked hard and had an innate ability to find the right horse at the right time at the right price. "When it comes to betting horses, I am closing in on 50...

In what is becoming a familiar trend for the sport of horse racing in North America, betting in 2024 declined by 3.35%. According to figures released Friday by Equibase, $11,265,210,514 was the all-sources yearly handle for 2024 for U.S. racing, down from 2023's total of $11,655,726,020. Handle was last up in 2021, but that was an outlier because those numbers were going up against 2020 figures when the pandemic shut down much of the sport. Prior to that, the last handle increase was in 2018. The more alarming trend is...