Stop Predatory Gambling

When the facts don’t support their answer, gambling interests change the question

by Les

For almost twenty years, racetrack owners across the country have pushed for slot machines at their facilities in the name of “saving jobs at the tracks.” Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on PR and public affairs work to promote the slots narrative, public interest in live racing continues to dramatically drop off.  

But this reality has not stopped predatory gambling interests from continuing their highly-deceptive, myth-making efforts to present the policy of legalizing racinos as a success for horse racing itself.

The latest example is the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board’s new report “showing a positive correlation between live racing and slot machine revenue at the state’s racetrack casinos” writes The Thoroughbred Times. Average daily revenue from slot machines rose 8.17% to $751,855 for race days at the state’s racinos in 2009, compared with $695,059 on days without live racing. Sounds like a winner, doesn’t it?

Yet buried in the report is the only category that really matters when measuring the pulse of live racing today: the total handle. The total handle is the amount of money being wagered on racing at the facility and it is the true indicator about the public’s interest going forward.

So has Pennsylvania’s policy of legalizing 61,000 slot machines across the state made a positive impact to improve the total handle? According to the report the total handle dipped 24.49% from $974.8-million in 2006 to $733.8-million in 2009.

Unless horse racing enthusiasts drastically change their failed strategy of embracing slot machines as the answer, pretty soon the predatory gambling interests like Harrah’s will follow the same approach they are using in Iowa:

Harrah’s calls greyhound racing a giant waste of money and resources — including real estate that could be used for more profitable enterprises.

“It’s like a horse and buggy manufacturer getting a subsidy from an auto manufacturer,” Harrah’s spokesman Gary Thompson says. “We’re subsidizing a dying business.”

Using slot money to support tracks never made much economic sense to begin with, though racetrack casinos were more politically palatable at the time, adds Jan Jones, the company’s senior vice president of communications and government relations.

“Horse and dog breeders have their share of political influence,” Jones says. “There were jobs at stake. And these facilities existed to begin with. It just seemed easier to put slots where betting was already taking place.”