Racing commissioners challenge Arlington Park’s request to run off-track betting parlors after it closed its track
Illinois racing officials are challenging a request to allow off-track betting by Arlington International Racecourse, even though it is not licensed for racing next year, as the statute appears to require.
Hawthorne Race Course officials proposed that they could instead take over the parlors, which allow gamblers to bet remotely on races around the country and watch them on television. The decision, set for later this month, could affect millions of dollars in bets and horse racing purses.
Arlington owner Churchill Downs Inc. shut down the track permanently in September and has a preliminary agreement to sell the site for $197 million to the Chicago Bears. Some members of the Illinois Racing Board expressed disbelief that Churchill Downs is now trying to make money off the very horse racing industry that they say it devastated.
Commissioner Alan Henry said it’s “plain common sense” that Arlington shouldn’t get the licenses after closing its track, saying, “It seems an awful lot like a farmer who sells his prize Holstein (cow), then expects to get paid for some of the milk it produces.”
Racing board Executive Director Domenic DiCera and attorney John Gay recommended allowing Arlington to have the off-track betting, known as OTB. They said the track is eligible under the law, and that precedent was set when the board allowed Balmoral and Maywood OTB licenses in 2016 despite running no races, and Arlington when it was temporarily closed in 1998 and 1999.
Arlington President Tony Petrillo testified under oath at a board meeting in November that it was important to save the jobs of workers at the parlors. He said that if the five proposed OTBs closed, it would jeopardize $20 million in bets and $2 million in commissions and race prize money to Hawthorne, and about $300,000 in revenue for Arlington.
Petrillo also maintained that Arlington officials are still pursuing racing at another location after 2022, but no such site has been identified.
Commissioner Beth Doria, a businesswoman whose father worked at various tracks in Illinois, questioned the sincerity of Churchill Downs wanting to preserve jobs, since its closing of the track put thousands of people out of work.
“I’m just wondering where that concern was when you closed the track itself?” she asked.
While the board previously awarded OTBs to tracks that didn’t race, Doria and others noted, it has never given the licenses to a track that had already permanently closed.
The Illinois Horse Racing Act states, “Any person licensed to conduct a race meeting” who raced previously may be issued an OTB license — but Arlington is not licensed to race next year because it didn’t ask to be, as Churchill Downs has shifted its operations largely to casinos.
Attorneys for Hawthorne Race Course and the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemens Association disputed the racing board’s legal opinion. They stated that Arlington is not eligible, noting that the law also requires off-track or “inter-track” wagering only within 160 miles of where the organization is licensed to conduct racing — which Arlington is not.
Hawthorne is already authorized to take over Arlington’s live horse racing next year. Hawthorne President Tim Carey said his track would also take over Arlington’s parlors, but would have to ask state lawmakers to change the law to allow it to take over more than one additional site, as was done when Balmoral and Maywood closed.
State law provides that the racing board should consider “the best interests of the public, of horse racing, and of maximizing revenue to the state.” So even if Arlington is eligible for OTB licenses, horsemen President Mike Campbell said, it doesn’t deserve it, and the board should deny it.
It was particularly concerning to Campbell that the racing board attorney cited a section of the law that allows “Any such person having operating control of the racing facility” to get a license, when Campbell said “such person” refers to someone licensed to hold live races.
Board Chairman Dan Beiser asked Petrillo whether it’s a right or privilege to get the licenses, to which Petrillo conceded that it was a privilege.
The board delayed its decision until its Dec. 16 meeting.
Arlington listed nine off-track betting sites on its webpage this fall, at the track in Arlington Heights, and in Aurora, Chicago, Green Oaks, Hodgkins, Hoffman Estates, McHenry, Rockford and Villa Park. Its application for next year is for only five locations, which were not specified at the hearing.
Further complicating matters, in October, Anthony Panico, head of a family that owns Arlington’s OTB site at Post Time Sports Bar and Grille in Green Oaks, and who was once linked to the Chicago Outfit, was sentenced to two years in prison for tax fraud. Panico was also accused in a civil suit of defrauding a business partner of $20 million for investments in Sports Time and other properties.
Typically, racing officials said, race tracks hold the OTB licenses, but partners operate the parlors. Arlington did not immediately reply to a request for comment about Post Time.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3lqheXX
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