After a period when Wyoming’s “instant racing” industry was being pummeled almost out of existence the owners of the machines are seeing their profits returning. This in turn is leading to more tax payments to the state, as well as disbursements to charities and municipalities, according to a report by the Caspar Star Tribune.
“Instant racing” is a recent form of gaming that is legal in Wyoming, Arkansas and Kentucky. Players bet on the winners of a database of hundreds of thousands of historic races, where the identifying names and locations have been removed. Players are given the statistics for the horses, and make informed bets based on that. That is the key to the games not being considered as gambling, because winners are determined more by skill.
The games were very popular in Wyoming beginning in 2003, peaking in 2015. The first court challenges came in 2006, when the state Supreme Court ruled that they were “a slot machine that attempts to mimic traditional pari-mutuel wagering.”
In 2013 the legislature legalized them with the proviso that they “afford an opportunity for the exercise of skill or judgment, where the outcome is not completely controlled by chance alone,” according to the Tribune report.
Then a year ago the nascent industry was dealt a near death blow when the state attorney general issued an opinion that the games violated the state’s law against gambling because they included a “bonus round” that was based entirely on chance.
Shortly thereafter the Wyoming Pari-Mutuel Commission ordered that all the machines be shut down until the bonus feature could be programmed out. This was done in February of this year, but by that time many of those who used to play the machines had gone on to something else. Many felt that they weren’t as fun with the bonus round removed.
In the intervening months the players have slowly returned and the revenues have started to inch back up.
The city of Cheyenne’s experience with “instant racing,” shows the rise and fall and rise again of revenues. In October 2014 the city collected $1,042. In February 2015 that number was $61,153, rising to $146,801 in August. The shutdown and reorganization resulted in just $93,546 paid to the city last February. The most recent payment was August 15 when Cheyenne collected $119,279.
Some sites that were closed down several months ago have reopened, but with a reduced staff. Some of the machines have seen the bonus round return, but with the element of chance removed.
According to one of the two operators in the state, “These bonus rounds are decided 100 percent by a horse race that ran sometime in the past, a pari-mutuel event. There’s nothing random about the outcome of the bonus rounds now. It’s a matter of tweaking our software to where the paybacks are spread out so the players can sit down and play the game for an extended period of time without losing a lot of money on it.”
The other operator estimates that the market has recovered to about 70 percent of what it was last year when the hammer fell.
The Pari-Mutuel Commission continues to work with both operators to reconfigure the games until they find what brings in the most players.
