Eghad

Churchill Downs is suing a horseman's group; the one who is causing them problems at Calder, and the one who is stopping the Lone Star signal from being shown to customers.

Churchill Downs Inc. filed a lawsuit April 24 asking a federal court to dissolve the Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Group.

In a suit filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, CDI, CDI-owned Calder Race Course, and Churchill Downs Technology Initiatives Co. also are seeking an injunction to prevent the THG and the Florida Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association from “agreeing on uniform terms for the sale of signals, boycotting racetracks and ADW operators that do not comply with their demands.”

I've never owned or ran a McDonald's, but I think it goes something like this: Buy meat off farmer, make meat into hamburger, sell hamburger to customer.

In racing we seem to do some sort of strange Xfiles or 12 Monkey's twist on this simple way of doing business. Is it to much to ask a track to put up a purse, a horseowner to enter a horse and race, and a customer to bet on it?

Where did this go all wrong. Why are trainers involved in signals? Why are tracks suing horseman?

Eghad.

More changes in the ADW world. The Youbet CEO resigned today. It seems that there are some strange things happening everywhere.

Well, as you know I downloaded a bunch of data for Calder, so I could play it on my jcapper software. And also, when I found out the next day that Calder was raising their takeouts I deleted those files. I decided what the heck, maybe I will send an email to Calder just to let them know that I would not be playing their signal because they raised prices.

First, I was floored that I got a response. Normally (I hear this over and over) that nine times out of ten, no one does. So thanks for that. Their marketing person clearly asked for my business and apologized for raising their prices. That was good.

Second, here is a further portion of the response.

We understand that a raise in prices is undesirable for customers of any product; however, with the rise of costs in the current economic climate, an increase of our take-out was deemed necessary.

Is there anyone in this business - anyone - that understands gambling? This is the truly unfortunate way tracks still think - like a monopoly where raising a price results in a jump in revenue. As one clever commenter has said (with regards to a tracks contention about rising costs) : "what in the heck does this mean? In twenty years takeouts will be 60%?"

Eghad, we have a long, long way to go in this business before we will be able to compete.