Saturday, March 24, 2012

Greyhound racing: a repugnant transaction with shifting coalitions

Lots of animal lovers find dog races a repugnant transaction, and it has faced ballot measures and bans.
As you would expect, firms that ran dog races opposed such bans. But that is changing, as dog races become less profitable. However, what keeps them in business is that laws were passed allowing dog racing venues to offer other kinds of gambling, and these are profitable. But, as the NY Times recently reported, to keep the licences for the other, profitable kinds of gambling, "even though the races are losing millions of dollars each year, the owners are required to keep the greyhounds running six days a week."

Read the full story (and weep) here: Greyhound Races Face Extinction at the Hands of Casinos They Fostered

1 comment:

bigslow said...

Overall handle in greyhound racing was up slightly last year. The move by the tracks to decouple was not an endorsement to end greyhound racing, only to move the burden of staging the racing while still hosting simulcast. The better study is to explore how the regulatory structure contributed to the decline and how the opposition has surfed the market wave to exploit the fund raising opportunity.