Excerpt:
“The actual effective takeout rate is far higher than what’s even being reported,” Cummings said. "That 17.3 percent – that’s the average published takeout rate – doesn’t really factor in elements like breakage, which is something that we’re really quite keen on and talking about and really educating the public.”
While takeout is the percent of money a racetrack retains from pari-mutuel pools for race purses, taxes or operating expenses, breakage is the pennies retained by a racetrack or state after a pari-mutuel payoff is rounded down to nickels or dimes.