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Simulcast betting
on horse races to end in Montana Dec. 30, 2011 - The Montana Board of Horse Racing is out of the simulcast racing business, and the state's seven off-track betting sites will be shut down indefinitely next week. The racing board agreed to suspend simulcast betting during a conference call on Wednesday at the urging of a governor-appointed business advisory committee, as soaring debts continue to be uncovered. "Our recommendation to the board was to suspend simulcast operations for a period of time, maybe as long as two months, to give us time to get a better operations plan in place," Christian Mackay said Thursday. Mackay is the executive director of the Montana Department of Livestock, which oversees the Board of Horse Racing. He was one of three men appointed to the advisory panel in October by Gov. Brian Schweitzer. The others are Cliff Larsen, a state senator and horseman from Missoula, and Dore Schwinden, executive director of the Department of Commerce. Mackay said the racing board is $560,000 in the hole, more than double what the Department of Livestock discovered in October. The deficit is due in part to overspending on live racing in 2011 in anticipation of simulcast generating enough revenue to cover it. "It just hasn't," Mackay said. Indeed, simulcasting has not been profitable with the state board operating it, said Mackay, who is also acting as executive secretary of the racing board. He is stepping in for Ryan Sherman, who was placed on administrative leave by the Livestock Department earlier this month and fired last week. Control of Montana simulcasting was assumed by the state racing board in November 2010 from California-based Montana Entertainment and its president, Eric Spector, after more than two decades of private operation. The board had awarded Spector statewide rights two years earlier, despite a decades-long history of profitable operation by the nonprofit corporation Montana Simulcast Partners. There are off-track betting sites in six Montana cities, including Katie O'Keefe's Casino in Missoula and Scotty's Bar in Kalispell. Billings has two sites, and the Magic City was one of only three towns that hosted live horse racing in 2011, along with Miles City and Kalispell. Simulcast racing allows customers to wager on horse races at various tracks across the country, in much the same fashion as they do at live tracks. Most of the proceeds go back to the bettors, but under state law, a percentage of all wagers are set aside to be distributed by the Board of Horse Racing back to the industry in the form of purses and assistance to live racetracks. read more | ||
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