“Don’t mess with a good thing.â€
That adage makes sense, although people often mess things up by tinkering with a proven winner. But the folks at FanDuel Sportsbook & Horse Racing, the thoroughbred horse track in Collinsville that most of its customers still call Fairmount Park and still legally has that name, are sticking with a formula that paid big dividends for them last year.
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Its former schedule featured races on Friday and Saturday nights plus Tuesday afternoons, but the format last season was pared to Saturdays and Tuesdays. Gone were Friday night cards, which for many years featured the popular “Party in the Park†promotion that included live music as well as food and drink specials.
Instead of jamming its racing dates into a spring-summer schedule and having cards on back-to-back nights, when many patrons would attend one but not both cards, the track spread its 62 days granted by the Illinois Racing Board from mid-April until mid-November. Rather than ending its season close to Labor Day, it continued until nearly Thanksgiving.
The move was a big success, as track president and general manager Melissa Helton said attendance was up 16.3% last year and the amount of money wagered at the track increased by 22.6%. Betting was up 36% when off-site wagering was included.
“It was definitely better than expected,†she said.
But those levels might not be reached this year because the state racing board has authorized Saturday racing at Hawthorne, in suburban Chicago, which it did not have last year. The tracks compete for horsemen and horses.
“This year will be a challenge,†Helton said. “But you have your dedicated horsemen who will run here.â€
This year’s meet, the 99th at the track, begins Tuesday with a seven-race card starting at 1 p.m. It will continue Saturday with a program at 7:30 p.m., and that schedule will remain in place through closing day, Nov. 16. The only exception is that live racing will begin at 1 p.m. on Saturday May 4, Kentucky Derby day, when at least nine races are planned.
Reynier Arrieta, last year’s top jockey at the track, is back this year after winning 83 races there in 2023. That’s 28 more than the runner-up, Alvin Ortiz.
Actor-broadcaster Peter Lurie is set to be on-site for opening day festivities, with food trucks also to be on hand.
Among the highlights on the schedule will be the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Derby on Aug. 24 and the annual breast cancer awareness night on Oct. 26, when people walk around the track to raise money for the fight against that disease.
Then the Nov. 5 card will consist of races in which all the horses were bred in Illinois.
“That was the biggest day for us last year,†Helton said, adding that more than $1 million was wagered on those races.
Betting scandals
While it looks as if one prominent pro athlete who has been drawn into a betting scandal is going to emerge unscathed, another far-less famous one — from the University of Missouri — still has ominous clouds hanging overhead.
Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani came through unblemished this week following a federal investigation of bets his former interpreter allegedly made with an illegal California bookie and used money stolen from Ohtani to pay his losses.
And those losses were massive, according to U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada. He said Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s longtime confidant as well as interpreter, stole more than $16 million through his role as the player’s “de facto manager†in which he embezzled money to finance his “insatiable appetite for illegal sports betting.†Mizuhara surrendered to federal authorities on Friday and was released on a signature bond in which he did not have to post cash or collateral but was ordered to undergo gambling-addiction treatment.
Estrada made it clear the Feds don’t think Ohtani was betting illegally.
“I want to emphasize this point: Mr. Ohtani is considered a victim in this case,†he said.
Had Ohtani been implicated, he could have faced severe repercussions not only possibly legally but also from Major League Baseball, which prohibits its personnel from wagering on the sport, even legally. It also does not allow wagering on other sports with illegal or offshore bookies.
Ohtani seemed relieved.
“For me personally, this marks a break from this, and I’d like to focus on baseball,†he told the Los Angeles Times through a new interpreter.
- The picture is much darker surrounding Jontay Porter, a journeyman NBA player who appeared in 33 games for Mizzou in the 2017-18 season and averaged 9.9 points.
Porter, now with the NBA’s Toronto Raptors, is under investigation in connection with wagering irregularities associated with him in two contests he bowed out of early, games in which his statistical production fell short of the betting numbers posted on his achievements.
The Raptors will miss the playoffs and their season ended Sunday. Porter did not play in their final 12 games, after the league said it was looking into the matter, and NBA commissioner Adam Silver is taking the situation very seriously. He addressed it recently after an NBA Board of Governors meeting in New York, and although he did not get into specifies of the case, he did say the probe is ongoing. And he indicated he would not be opposed to imposing the league’s most severe penalty on Porter if it is found that he was influencing his play because of betting.
“I have an enormous range of discipline available to me,†Silver said. “It’s cardinal sin what he’s accused of in the NBA. The ultimate extreme option I have is to ban him from the game. That’s the level of authority I have here because there’s nothing more serious.â€
The NBA was the first major U.S. pro league to embrace the recent spread of legal sports betting to many states, and Silver recognizes the pratfalls associated with that in addition to the financial rewards. But he also said legalization leads to red flags being raised by legitimate sportsbooks that could be hurt by manipulations.
“This is not new that there’s unsavory behavior, even illegal behavior, around sports betting,†Silver said. “I guess my point is that to the extent it’s going to exist, if you have a regulated environment, you’re going to have a better chance of detecting it than you would if all the bets were placed illegally.â€