by Ed DeRosa
Hidden among a pair of sales pitches for services related to wagering integrity was news that the pari-mutuel industry is trending toward investing more money to ensure the integrity of its wagering pools.
The Symposium on Racing and Gaming began its final day on Thursday in Tucson with representatives of two companies that offer wagering monitoring services telling those assembled not only what their companies do but also that several jurisdictions in North American racing have retained their services, signaling that racetrack associations and regulators are willing to invest money in wagering integrity issues.
“I was talking about the [Breeders’ Cup] pick six scandal [from 2002], and I said, ‘Those guys are out of jail, and we haven’t even gotten started on fixing the problem,'” said Isidore Sobkowski, president of Advanced Monitoring Systems Inc. (AMS), the company that the New York State Racing and Wagering Board has retained to monitor its wagering pools. “There’s a lot of talk about wagering integrity, but very little has been done.”
AMS will begin monitoring the New York pools in 2009, and Sobkowski said that both California and Kentucky are considering adopting the Association of Racing Commissioners International (RCI)'s recommendation of having an independent monitor.
Still, not everyone is buying the goods that Sobkowski and Kevin Mullally of Gaming Laboratories International Inc. are selling.
Chris Scherf , executive vice president of the Thoroughbred Racing Associations, said that his racetrack members have been monitoring every wager for the past year and it is unfair that the RCI will not endorse the TRA system because it is not independent of the industry. He called AMS a “de facto monopoly.”
“We are the most regulated industry around; we have regulators in the tote rooms and in the stewards’ stand,” said Roy Arnold, president of TRA member track Arlington Park. “We’re doing the monitoring, and we’re required to report anomalies to those officials. They’re there representing the regulators, and we want to work with them.”
Another issue Scherf raised is that AMS monitors wagers on a transactional basis, but much of racing’s handle comes off-track, and the industry uses a store-and-send protocol.
“All the claims that it can monitor all these wagers is false,” Scherf said. “You can’t tell me if someone is past posting from the Caribbean or Australia.”
RCI Executive Vice President Paul Bowlinger fittingly began the panel by noting how prevalent infighting is among industry participants. Everyone agrees wagering integrity is important, but agreement as to who should pay for it and how to monitor it is less common.
“Racing is the only segment of the gaming community that has not implemented some sort of major system to monitor its wagers,” Mullally said. “Just saying things are okay is not enough. There is a difference between due diligence and regulation, and there must be some willingness to compromise on what is the reasonable level of regulation and what the reasonable levels of oversight are, and which areas of that oversight require third party participation.”
Mullally said that Texas and Iowa regulators have retained Gaming Laboratories.
Scherf echoed a major point from the International Simulcast Conference in September in which J. Curtis Linnell, the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau's director of wagering analysis, told simulcasting officials that it should urge their regulators to get rid of cancel delays.
“It would be the height of hypocrisy if California approved AMS but still had cancel delay,” Scherf said.
Dennis Oelschlager of AMS agreed.
“Wagers removed from the pools result in less handle,” Oelschlager said. “Wagers not cancelled that become winning wagers dilute pool payouts that should be distributed to winning wagers, this is especially the case in the exotic pools.”
RCI President Ed Martin concluded the panel by telling Scherf that his organization welcomes the opportunity to discuss the issue with TRA.
Ed DeRosa is news editor of Thoroughbred Times