Crist and Beyer lay into NYRA and Stronach for having financial interests in CAW's

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by o_crunk

The primary customer of horse racing these days is state governments.

Which is more than half the reason it's a mess in many places.

It's an industry that's been doing everything it could to insulate itself from market forces for many years while at the same time being handcuffed by corrupt incompetent governments, corrupt incompetent internal politics and other entities that make it impossible to move fast enough even if someone finally does have a good idea.

In the real world not a single dollar of casino money would go towards horse racing, we would have been down to 15-20 tracks at most years ago, the free cash would ensure the pools were secure, tracks would either be competing with lower takes or at a minimum moving quickly to experiment with different take levels and bet types instead of raising the take to the level of the their dumbest competitor, and instead of giving a piece of the action to government, tracks would pay taxes on profits (if there were any).

It could all be done with minimal regulation to protect the consumer and a higher level regulation to protect the horses.

The entire thing would then sink or swim based on the merits of racing as a gambling option and the competence of the people running the tracks trying to make money. If it's supposed to sink, so be it, but I think it would flourish. It would just be smaller.

Of course this IS all fantasy because it makes way more sense than what we have now. So corrupt incompetent governments would never allow it and those sucking on the tit of casino money would fight it tooth and nail to keep their jobs and revenue.

Of course the untold millions (billions over time) now being used to prop up all these zombie tracks could then go towards solving some of our many social problems instead.

Sorry for the rant, but watching this industry die is no fun.

[totemastergeneral]

Who calls the shots for state governments? Not the legislators sitting back and examining the data and making rational decisions. If that was it, the dreaded decoupling of slot money from racing purses would have happened a long time ago.

The government does the bidding of the people who lobby them and exert influence in various ways on them. aka people with the sort of money that thoroughbred owners have.

And those are entitled pricks, pretty much all of them.

My industry has lost public favor and won't be as lucrative for me, or even die? I get the "just transition" of slot subsidies to help me out. And/or limit my activities just to localities that will provide other forms of subsidy.

California did more than enough to kill racing on its own, but nobody is really interested in trying to do much to revive it because they know that in CA they aren't going to get the handouts. So the industry retracts to KY/FL/AR/IN, or New York where even if the politics is considered by many to be similar to CA's there is still a much more sizable grift machine.

This is why, even though they "got what they wanted" CDI still got out of IL for VA.

The game has a lot more runway left before things get much worse than they are now. Because as it is now it greatly benefits the very top echelon, which is why it still exists.

Even the craziest state govs aren't gonna be able to sell anyone why they gotta give Winstar Farm a billion dollars cash as a going out of business present for the lost value of all the lost future breedings, so it will get kept alive in this form with more indirect payouts for a LONG time.