His article this week on the Arlington Million and state of Illinois racing is below. He has written similar stories in years past. I think his underlying premise is that Illinois horse racing can compete only if they allow a casino to open at the tracks. He doesn't specifically mention in it in this article, but the assumption is that the track would use other casino revenues to subsidize racing purses. I am not sure how it works in the other states that have taken away Illinois horses.

In any case, I think the underlying problem is much bigger- horse racing is a dying industry in the aggregate. As all forms of gambling has expanded, it is only natural that wagering on horses is in perpetual decline.

I am curious what our resident horse racing experts think on the topic.

"updated: 8/7/2017 7:21 PM
Rozner: Illinois bumbles while horse racing crumbles

When John Henry defeated The Bart in the inaugural running of the Arlington Million in 1981 -- a result some of us still refuse to acknowledge, if you'll pardon the digression -- it was a monumental event for horse racing.

It was the first million-dollar purse, there was spectacular international presence on and off the track, and the horse racing world flocked to Chicago for a race that would be televised internationally.

With the 35th edition set to run Saturday at Arlington Park, it's fair to wonder how many more the Local Oval has in store for patrons who worry about the future of Illinois horse racing.

What was once a billion-dollar industry in Illinois -- encompassing the tracks, breeders, horsemen and agribusiness that supports racing in so many ways -- is shrinking by the day as neighboring states take advantage of the disaster that is Illinois politics.

"We're very concerned about horse racing in this state. It's very, very fragile right now," said Arlington Park general manager Tony Petrillo. "It's on the brink of destruction."

It took decades to create a gambling bill, and when the state managed to get a pair of bills passed, former Governor Pat Quinn inexplicably vetoed both.

Already in significant trouble because surrounding states have casinos at their racetracks, Illinois horse racing quickly began to collapse.

"The states that have gaming are taking advantage of us," Petrillo said. "Owners, breeders and trainers are leaving Illinois in droves.

"We have a historic low number of horses on the backstretch as all those folks leave for the states that have slots and table games at their facilities.

"They can afford to make their purses twice as big or three times as big, so what would you expect people to do if you can't earn enough to keep a horse or breed a horse in Illinois?

"They're leaving Illinois for Iowa and Indiana and Minnesota and Ohio. We used to be No. 4 in the country. Now, we're down around No. 28 or 30."

There's currently a senate bill that would provide for slots at the tracks and a house amendment that allows for the tracks to bring in table games, just as would the new casinos in the senate bill.

Of course, this is Illinois where politicians guarantee higher taxes and the flight of jobs, businesses and residents to somewhere less dysfunctional.

And with every passing day, horse racing in the state is closer to the end.

"It's like someone pulled the plug and we're going down the drain," Petrillo said. "We're barely hanging on as an industry.

"We had two bills passed and vetoed and that really hurt a lot of people. A lot of jobs were lost and especially at the lower income levels. It really needs to be addressed because it's been devastating for so many who need the income.

"Hopefully, our legislative leaders will get together and recognize the financial importance of this industry."

Horse racing is not looking for a handout. It's not looking for a special deal. It's not looking for any favors.

It merely wants a level playing field.

It wants the ability to compete with casinos in Illinois and compete with racetracks in other states that already have casinos and are crushing Illinois horse racing.

As usual, Illinois is far behind the times and the delay in getting something done is killing a business and all the jobs that go with it, not to mention the loss of jobs created by new casino construction.

In the meantime, tracks in Illinois have gone under, a couple more are hanging on by a thread. and Arlington's parent company won't be patient for many more years.

So how many more Millions will there be at Arlington?

"Maybe five or six more? I hope. I don't know," Petrillo said. "We're lucky to be part of a bigger company (Churchill Downs Inc.) and have financial backing, but they have to answer to shareholders and the last seven or eight years the investment doesn't look so good on paper anymore.

"At some point in time here, investors and activists will start looking at this property as having other uses more sustainable than horse racing."

So while horse racing crumbles, Illinois bumbles and neighboring states steal revenue and jobs.

A game that was once so great is nearing the end, and if something isn't done soon it will most certainly come to an end.

One more reason to get to Arlington Saturday and take part in a great event.

Before it's gone forever.

brozner@dailyherald.com"

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Horse racing is looking for a special deal. They want slots welfare. Because other states have it. But ultimately, if racing can't stand on its own, it should be allowed to die. Eventually you get state legislators wondering why they're giving all this money to a bunch of hillbillies when it could be used for schools or pensions. How do you justify Jose Valdivia Jr. making $500,000 a year largely funded by the taxpayers when the state is broke?

Simulcasting has altered the entire game. In Illinois we have Recapture which fucks things up even more. (http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/ ... ture-money

Illinois is still a good market for racing. Hawthorne harness handles relatively well. But as you suggest, racing has bigger problems overall. Foal crops are down. Six horse fields aren't great for betting. Track operators don't understand the gambler. Keeneland just raised its takeout to the max allowable by law. It's worse than the pop tax.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Thank you for responding. I thought it was slots welfare. Barry didn't mention it in this column, but he has in the past. The industry needs to stand on its own, and it can't because people have moved to other forms of gambling.

We obviously both love horse racing, but that is just not true of the upcoming generations.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Florida tracks with betting are a joke, whether they are horse or dog. We went to Derby Lane outside Tampa, and maybe 1/4 of the people there were watching the racing instead of playing poker and slots.

I used to love horse racing as a kid, even though I never went to the track. My family's restaurant was downtown in the pre-OTB days and was a place where a lot of BDH who worked in the Loop would eat dinner on their way to Hawthorne/Sportsman's/Maywood. As a pre-teen I'd read Dave Feldman religiously, and do my own shadow betting on the Arlington lines, and would do reasonably well given the lack of information (e.g. lose, but not much). In graduate school when I didn't have classes on Fridays, I'd play golf in the morning someplace cheap in Lake County and then go to the OTB in Waukegan for the last 6 races. Work and life got me away from going regularly once I had income, because I knew I couldn't invest enough time into it to be successful and golfing and travel got that disposable income instead.

Now I go to Keeneland once a year with a group, and I'm amazed at how many races are absolute shit to bet on. 6 horse races with a 2-5 favorite, 12 horse maidens, etc. In a day, there are maybe two races i'd consider if I was being serious about investing vs. entertainment. But half the Keeneland spectacle is just the beauty of the place, and the fact that the weekends draw tons of UK and other pretty young things out in their Sunday finest.

If horse and greyhound racing are going to survive, there has to be an angle besides just investing. But slots aren't the answer. Slots are bringing in precisely the wrong crowd, the people who don't care about the spectacle but who are just interested in pushing buttons over and over again.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

Florida is its own special mess. About ten or fifteen years ago Gulfstream and Hialeah would fight every year over the allocation of dates. Eventually the racing board became so frustrated they just said, "Fine, run whenever you guys want." That effectively meant the end of Hialeah as an "A" track.

When the casino gambling came to Florida the horsemen got a bad deal. The purse money they get from the slots is a pittance. Now, you may ask why they should get any, but passing this kind of expanded gambling legislation isn't easy. And the track operators/casino companies need the horsemen on board in order to get the legislation passed that allows them the exclusive right to casinos.

Part of the law says that the casino needs to race x number of days in order to operate the slots/card rooms. So now you have these tracks like Hialeah and Oxford and other hillbilly places that race ten two-horse races (using the same two animals) over about 400 yards and do it on five or ten days or the minimum they need to qualify to operate the casino. They organize their own horseman's association. It's a complete sham. Not to mention likely animal abuse.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Yes, and the incentive to get them to bet on horses is non-existent. In fact, the operators want to do just the opposite. Running the racetrack is just a necessary evil until they can figure out a way to get rid of it. That's why you see Yonkers cancel racing at the drop of a hat.

But the horsemen aren't blameless either. They're greedy pigs that are just chopping up the slots money while it lasts instead of taking a portion of it to market the sport. Also, when 90% of purses are funded by slots revenue rather than betting on the product, the customer becomes an annoyance rather than someone to please. Since so much of the purses are funded by slots in places like New York and Pennsylvania the tracks could feasibly offer zero (or at least very low) takeout wagering on the races and you'd see how that would drive handle and create new customers.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Hah, I was open to believing that maybe Rozner was right in this instance, but you guys confirmed exactly what I suspected all along. If I still had my burner Don Simmons hot mail account, I would drop Roz-man a note.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I didn't see any other taxpayers winning 5 out of 7 races at Arlington last Sunday. Too bad I only cashed in on 2 of them.

Good point.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

that's pretty sad but i'm not surprised by it. and in this day and age, with so much attention focused on animal welfare, i can't believe the average person doesn't look at this as somewhat barbaric. i mean, not to the level of bullfighting; but sometimes knowing what they do to these horses makes you pause.

i still love watching races, more than i like betting on them. i've certainly gotten more enjoyment watching races than losing money on them. but it's not something that i think can catch a young audience these days.

with the other gambling stuff, i can only defer to the experts.

i will say, it looks like the international game is doing fine. lots of races in the UK and Australia. SAF has their fair share, and they certainly are more kind to bettors. The average odds winners are like 7-2. it's rare that a 1-5 or 3-5 or even odds wins. lots of long shots. just hard to pick a winner.

The fellating of Darling. Why?

updated: 10/21/2017 6:11 PM
Rozner: TBS' Darling pitches honesty in baseball broadcast

No, Ron Darling does not hate your team or any team. He's paid to say what he thinks and he does it well for TBS during the postseason.

Every now and then, there's something very wrong with baseball math.

Yes, Kris Bryant, seven remains more than six. Feel pretty good about that one.

But starting pitchers are becoming more and more expensive, while performing less and less, throwing fewer innings on shorter pitch counts.

That simply doesn't add up.

"What has happened now is the people who make decisions in baseball are using a lot of statistical analysis," color analyst Ron Darling said a few days ago at Wrigley Field, before an NLCS game where he was doing terrific work for TBS. "What that analysis is telling them is that, the third or fourth time through the order, starting pitchers are having more and more trouble getting people out.

"If you look at my numbers, the third or fourth time through the order I was even better. The reason is I was trained for that marathon.

"These young pitchers are trained to only go 5 or 6 innings, so by the time they get to the third time through the order, they're gassed. If you're gassed, you're definitely going to be less effective."

And here's where Darling makes a point that any front-office analyst would understand.

"Where I find the discrepancy is that we're still paying the starter like he's pitching 250 innings and giving him $20 million or $25 million," Darling said. "I think in time that might change. Teams might start paying starters a little differently because of their role."

Since starters aren't being trained to go deep, they don't know how to get through a lineup even if a pitch count is low and a manager is willing to ride him.

"If no one was on base and I was facing Mike Schmidt, I would pitch him differently in the first inning than I would in the seventh with two guys on," Darling explained. "Over the course of 120 pitches in a game, I would throw max-effort fastballs maybe 10 times.

"But if it's a 2-2 count and we're winning by a run and Mike Schmidt's up and a runner on third and less than two outs, instead of 92 (mph) I throw 94 (mph).

"He pops up to center field. He throws his bat down like he missed it. But I know he didn't miss it because I added just enough to get him out. That's the art of pitching you don't see very much now."

So will baseball ever get back to a time when pitchers are taught to throw more pitches and more innings?

"I think that part of the game is gone forever," Darling said. "It's because of how expensive these pitchers are when they're drafted. They give them $4 million or $5 million and they protect them.

"I think the agents won't let it happen because they're afraid of them not having a long career."

This is the essence of Darling the ex-player. He has never had to search for his voice because -- unlike so many TV analysts in baseball -- Darling is able to quickly and clearly explain what is happening on or off the field, assisted by an erudite approach befitting a Yale all-American.


With an old-school mentality, yet unafraid of and willing to embrace today's metrics, Darling's commentary comes off as easy and smooth.

Maybe that's because Darling is fearless, more concerned with delivering for the fans than couching his opinions to protect players, managers or MLB execs.

"I'd rather just talk about the athletes and how great they are all the time," Darling said. "Occasionally, we come across rules and things that have been changed since my playing days.

"Some are good and some are bad, and I think they should be addressed in the proper way.

"I don't try to do this job ever intending to be mean. I'm just trying to be smart in what I'm talking about and that includes the players and the rules.

"The reason I do the job is these games, these postseason games. This is the most important time of the year. I can't play anymore, but this makes me feel like I'm part of it."

In New York, Ron Darling is hardly a mystery. A 1986 World Series hero and current Mets broadcaster, Darling has been a star for TBS, on par with the best national color guys in the game.

"What I enjoy is it's the closest thing to being on a team," Darling said. "It's a collaborative effort. You're part of something.

"I love working with the cameramen to the producers and the runners and my play-by-play guy.

"I always thought I was a good teammate and I try to be a good teammate in what I'm doing now.

"Maybe my role from 8 o'clock to 11 o'clock is more important than someone else's, but they do all the heavy lifting before the game and after the game. I love the collaboration and I love the game."

It's comes across not too loud, but always clear.

brozner@dailyherald.com

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You