The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission has approved a pari-mutuel license for Iowa Greyhound Park in Dubuque for 2021, though whether the park will continue after that remains unclear.
“We are in a situation where we have to go year by year,” said Brian Carpenter, the park’s general manager in a press release. “It’s exciting to know we are going to be running in 2021. We are looking forward to it.”
The approval does reflect that the commission feels the park is viable financially through 2021.
“When a racetrack is submitting an application for renewal, they do have to prove viability,” said IRGC Administrator Brian Ohorilko in a release. “I don’t think the commission would want to award a license renewal if they believed it couldn’t be fulfilled.”
The IRGC also approved year-round simulcasting at the park and a tentative schedule that includes 112 racing days – eight more than in 2020, according to Iowa’s Telegraph Herald.
Carpenter announced that the meet will start on the final Saturday in April, about three weeks earlier than this year’s start. The last race of 2021 is slated for late October.
According to the Telegraph Herald, Iowa Greyhound Park has reported a total handle—or amount wagered—of $12.6 million this year through September. That figure is already up 27 percent from 2019.
However, the track is about to lose two subsidies.
Q Casino and Hotel will make its final, $500,000 payment next year, and the casino in Council Bluffs will make its last yearly payment of $4.6 million in 2022. Iowa Greyhound Park receives the payments as the result of a 2014 settlement agreement that allowed the casinos to cut ties with greyhound racing, the telegraph Herald reported.
The track is also suffering from the decline in greyhound tracks around the country, which has led to many greyhound breeders shutting down.
“Eventually, we may get to the point where there are not enough dogs to race,” Carpenter told the paper. “We looked at the number of dogs and determined we should be able to operate next year without any problem, but 2022 is still up in the air.”
