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What horse racing needs to do is figure how to get people interested again.  I am sure when the movie Seabiscuit came out much of the industry was excited.  It would not be the first time a movie has made a sport or a form of gambling popular again.  Seabiscuit did not do the trick.  I have my doubts that a single exciting horse would be enough to cause a resurgence in the sport unless the horse was extraordinarily fast, but we would have to be talking Guinness book speeds.  Unfortunately, the spectacle of little men galloping around on the back of top shape horses no longer appeals to the average gambler.  Individual tracks need to come together and figure out how to save the sport as a whole.

I suppose what is destined to happen with horse racing is that slowly but surely small and obscure tracks will close their doors forever.  After that some of the bigger named tracks will eventually close up shop.  Then ultimately there will only be a few tracks operating in only a select few states.  Maybe, and this is extremely wishful thinking, the obscurity of horse racing will create a resurgence of the sports popularity in some niche market.  However, I believe it is safe to say that the days of any racetrack pulling in 40,000 attendants the was they did when Secretariat was king of the track are over now.  If track owners are smart they will sell their venues while they still can and invest in some other project that might turn a profit.

I have long said that the problem with most racetracks is not the fact that they are not allowed to operated slot machines.  The problem with racing is that it no longer appeals to modern audience.  More than one generation that is old enough to gamble now has grown up in an era of rather modern technology.  These people do not have interest in watching horse run around a track.  This is particularly true of these crumbling tracks sparsely decorated with the elderly where even if you win you cannot possible get paid very much money.  Nobody is wagering a lot and not a lot of people are wagering.  Times are bleak in racing.

Maywood has apparently suffered because many of the great races and horse are moving to states that allow their tracks to offer slot machines or at least receive a government subsidy.  But even the tracks that do receive a subsidy are not doing very well.  New Jersey’s tracks have thrived off of popularity for several years, but they have not turned a real profit for sometime now.  At one point in time a major racing event at Maywood caused serious traffic jams and there was not a spot to be found in its parking lot.  The parking lots are still full, but now they are filled with Target customers.  I suppose it is only a matter of time before the whole parking lot is filled with customers of a strip mall.  Not even tradition is enough to keep a sport alive if there is no longer an entertainment value.

New Jersey’s racetracks are stealing customers from the best horses and trainers from places like Indiana.  However, New Jersey is not doing hot at all.  As a matter of fact things are doing so terrible at the new Jersey racetracks that the government decided to stop granting the subsidies that it offered the track for years keeping it alive.  So it would appear that racing is in such a state that one dying tracks is simply stealing clients from another dying track.  Horse racing venues can hardly keep themselves open, let alone contribute to the economy.  Horse racing does not even seem to be able to keep its clients happy.  Most grand stands, once cluttered with tens of thousands of bettor now has an attendance of a few dozen.  It is a rather bleak and unfortunate sight.  All the slot machines in the worlds cannot fix that problem.

One of the finest moment in the entire history of the state of Illinois occurred at the old Arlington Park racetrack.  It was the day that 40,000 people cluttered into the stadium just to get a glimpse of the world most famous racehorse, Secretariat.  This event occured one month after Secretariat had one the Triple Crown.  The popularity of Secretariat spurred an unbeleivable growth in the sport as a whole.  In the years that followed the industry started making major contributions to the state coffers.  In 1979, horse racing in Illinois was responsible for $85 million dollars in tax revenue.  While slot machines are capable of producing hundreds of millions of dollars for a state.  $85 million is nothing to sneeze at.

One of the more interesting stories about slot machines and their involvement in Illinois history is the bribery scandal involving federal judge Otto Kerner in 1973.  Kerner was also once the Governor of the state.  It was discovered that he was involved in a bribery scheme where he received kickbacks from certain tracks.  Kerner was taken down by an ambitious federal prosecutor James R. Thompson.  For those of you that know your Illinois political history, Thompson later went on to become the Governor of Illinois himself.  The press from that political scandal is what launched Thompson’s career.  It is hard not to appear a super hero when taking down a huge political figure steeped in corruption.  Illinois has a rich history where the horse racing industry plays in integral role in some chapters.  But every good book comes to an end and a great performance showed know when to bow out.

This recession is the worst economic crisis to hit the United States since the Great Depression.  It has made people ultra aware of how the Government is spending tax dollars.  People even had the nerve to get upset about how much money insuring the safety of our President cost as he went over seas.  Yet, somehow a state politician saying we should make sure that racetracks get a few million dollars from legalized slot machines does not get people red in the face.  It is likely that there are literally thousands of government services that are better deserving of the money that some state donate to the horse racing industry out of some weird form of historic loyalty.  The horse racing industry manages to still wield some powerful lobbying maneuvers but these efforts should be rather transparent during a recession.

It has become clear to me that the racing industry has blurred the issue for most residents by pitching slot machines at racetracks means new casinos will not have to crop up your neighborhood.  This appeals to many residents, especially families that are not interested in a nightlife scene cropping up next door.  Since most Americans have a strong sense of fairness, especially when it comes to money, the idea of the racetracks getting a cut of the revenue from the slot machines they are hosting does not seem in the least bit unfair.  If anything they should be getting a form of rent money for housing the state’s slot machines.  It is a clever disguise on the part of the racetracks to appear as some community saving entity that will prevent crime from infiltrating a neighborhood by centralizing the gambling venues of a state.

Legalizing slot machines is not typically something residents in a state take very lightly.  It is rare that slot machines are legalized without some sort of controversy.  However, the idea of added revenue is typically the selling point for expanded gambling while I am sure there are some gambling enthusiasts that just love the idea of not having to take a road trip to sate their waging cravings.  This is why it surprises me that more people do not get upset when politicians like the House Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Robert A. DeLeo, openly suggest that any of this revenue should go to supporting race tracks.  Racetracks do not affect enough peoples lives for that to fly in most circles.  I am disappointed that more people do not demand that the revenue be spent solely on schools, infrastructure, or cutting down on taxes.