Overall sports betting is going up while horse racing wagers are going down, even though they have one major thing in common: widely available online gambling sites.
How is it that overall sports betting continues to boom, but that betting on horse races — “the sport of kings” — is in a funk?
The amount wagered on stick-and-ball leagues like the NFL, NBA, and MLB seemingly ticks up every month in the United States. Meanwhile, pari-mutuel wagering on thoroughbred horse racing is trending down.
In November, New York customers bet almost $2.3 billion using apps such as BetMGM, DraftKings, and FanDuel, up from $2.1 billion a year earlier. Bettors placed more than $14.5 billion іn mobile sports wagers іn the Empire State from April 2024 tо the end оf November.
For the same month, Equibase reported $921.1 million іn bets оn thoroughbred horse races іn the U.S. That was up about 1.2% from November 2023, but year-to-date handle was still down by 2.5%.
Then, іn December, bettors staked $682.1 million оn U.S. thoroughbred races, down 14.4% from a year earlier. Total wagering for 2024 was about $11.3 billion, down 3.35% from 2023.
Declining Pari-Mutuel Handle
U.S. Pari-mutuel handle now declined four out of the past five years, the only exception an 11.8% increase in 2021 following COVID-19-affected 2020. Meanwhile, according to Covers’ revenue tracker, sportsbook handle for 2024 should blow past the $121.1 billion wagered in 2023.
“What’s particularly alarming is that the decline in pari-mutuel wagering is occurring at a moment in U.S. history when it’s easier to bet on horse racing than it has ever been,” wrote the Paulick Report’s Andrew Cohen earlier this week. “In many jurisdictions, adults can bet on horse racing on their phones. There are millions of potential new customers to entice.”
It’s easier than ever to wager on stick-and-ball games as well, and people do it in record numbers. Seemingly every week there’s a new story about online sports betting’s prominence and problems, including advertising that critics claim is annoying and ubiquitous.
Horse Racing Apps Not Enough
There are also companies like DraftKings and FanDuel that have their own horse racing apps sports bettors can use. However, if they do use them, they don’t use them enough to stop pari-mutuel handle bleeding. Overall sports betting is going up and wagering on horse racing is going down, even though they’re both widely available through online gambling sites.
So the rising tide of legal sports betting isn’t lifting every boat. Horse racing may get a sports betting-related bump at times, but the craze in NFL, NBA and other league wagering isn’t propelling pari-mutuel handle upwards.
This is bad for the thousands of people the horse racing industry employs, either directly or indirectly. It’s also bad for fans of the sport. The stagnation in handle has happened alongside nearly 50 race tracks closing since 2000, including the oldest track in the U.S. last month, Freehold Raceway.
Industry Opinions and Potential Solutions
“If horse racing doesn’t change soon, it won’t be here,” said Bill Pascrell III, a partner at Princeton Public Affairs Group and a longtime gaming industry lobbyist, in an interview with Covers this week.
It’s also kind of confusing: people will seemingly bet on anything — Coloradans bet $17.3 million on table tennis in November — but are wagering less on a longtime gambling staple.
And horse racing still has good days, where bettors flock from all over to wager, including those who normally stick to human athletes. The Kentucky Derby is one such day. The Breeders’ Cup in the fall was another.
Success Stories Amid Decline
FanDuel reported handle and active users were up 10% and 15%, respectively, for the 2024 Triple Crown season compared to 2023. The number of users wagering on the races via FD was also up more than 20% year-over-year, with more than 550,000 customers using the operator’s app.
Over 800,000 customers played the ponies with FanDuel or TVG, another Flutter Entertainment brand, during the Kentucky Derby-Preakness Stakes-Belmont Stakes stretch. FanDuel said this was “double digit percentage growth” over the 2023 Triple Crown.
Yet FD is something of an exception to the rule. Its parent company, Flutter, has longstanding ties to the racing industry and a TV network dedicated to showing races year-round. The sport is a bigger priority for FanDuel than it may be for other operators.
Joe Asher, the former CEO of William Hill U.S., told the audience at the Jockey Club’s annual roundtable conference this past August he used to say they did great on horse racing five days a year. Those were when the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, Belmont, and Breeders’ Cup were running.
“It was the other 360 days a year that were a challenge,” Asher noted.
No Quick Fixes
So there are mixed signals. Overall, though, the arrow is pointing down for pari-mutuel wagering.
“Horse racing in America is a beautiful, historical, legacy industry,” Pascrell said. “But, like traditional lottery players, the horse racing punters are aging out. And the reason they’re aging out is because they’ve been betting for decades and are into their 70s and 80s and beyond, and they’re used to the pari-mutuel system.”
Pascrell and others have worked for years to find new ways of drawing younger bettors toward horse racing.
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