The province’s horse-racing industry is in line for a major makeover under the recommendations made by Horse Racing Industry Transition Panel.
Those recommendations were revealed Tuesday and include reducing the number of race dates by half to 800, basing the size of purses on the pari-mutual handle, introducing new revenue streams through horse-racing specific lottery and other betting options and turning the Ontario Racing Commission into strictly a regulatory body while creating a race-tracks alliance to handle the industry’s administrative duties.
The recommendations are designed to aid the industry in making its transition while weaning itself from the Slots at Racetracks Program that will be discontinued after the end March.
The report expects the new recommendations to cost $6 million spread over three years.
Responsibility for the horse racing industry would also fall under the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. The goal is to introduce the recommendations in time for the 2013 race season.
The plan would see the industry ‘right-sized’ from 1,544 race dates in 2011 to 800, a reduction of 48 per cent.
Overall purses in the province would drop by 45 per cent to $133.2-million from $243.4-million in 2011.
The smallest reduction in purses is the Thoroughbred A division with a drop of 14 per cent while the Standardbred C division will be slashed by 77 per cent.
The big change regarding purses will be in the funding.
Currently 60 per cent of purses come from money generated by the Slots at Racetracks Program.
The new plan (Sustainable Horse Racing Model) for the industry will be based on the betting pools while government dollars will be used to cover track infrastructure and related costs and require any earnings to be re-invested in the industry.
The other major change will see a new administrative body created to handle the scheduling, marketing, setting of purses through purse pooling, making sure all races in Ontario have full fields (minimum of 10 horses) and have a common agreement with all horsemen at member tracks.
This centralized race secretariat, which will be composed of a track alliance of least six tracks, will be in place within three years and will be led by industry leaders.
To help ensure the survival of the industry, which the three-member panel concluded requires public dollars in every jurisdiction where it exists around the world, several new betting games will be explored.
Among them will be a racing-specific lottery and electronic terminal betting on historical races which have proved successful in the U.S.
It’s also proposed that tracks and their off-track betting shops should be given a monopoly on sports books, which will allow betting on single games, when legalized as expected by the federal government.
Estimates put the potential revenue from the new betting games at $100-million.
The government’s new industry model would be reviewed every three years to make sure public investment in the industry doesn’t exceed the minimum needed for its survival.
The panel opted to keep that minimum funding level secret until an agreement on the model could be concluded with representatives from the horse-racing industry.