Many of the 22,138 fans entered Monmouth Park on a wet July 23 to watch TVG.com Haskell Stakes (G1) may have noticed something new from previous visits.
It’s not entirely unusual for that to happen at the Jersey Shore track.
For more than a decade, Monmouth has been one of the sport’s most innovative and enduring racetracks, giving life to ideas like the days of winning a million dollars in a daily wallet or award winning bets. change.
Let’s not forget that, the only reason sports betting has gone wild across the country is because Monmouth CEO and Chairman Dennis Drazin was intent on ignoring the opponents and convincing the Court The nation’s Supreme Court lifted restrictions so that sports betting could become legal in New Jersey and throughout the country.
This year’s novel idea involves fixed odds bets. Monmouth has become a pioneer in the United States for a form of betting that has become hugely popular in Europe and Australia, home to BetMakers, Monmouth’s partner in the fixed-odds venture.
In fixed odds betting, basically what you bet is what you get. The odds are locked so that the price you get at the time of placing the bet never changes. A horse’s fixed odds may change as betting takes place, but the odds for each bet stay the same and cannot be changed like pari-mutuel odds when a favorite horse has can be hit from 2-1 to 4-5 in the last minutes of the bet.
New infield tote table showing fixed odds on Haskell Stakes
“Fixed odds make the game within the game and people are starting to gravitate towards it,” said Dallas Baker, head of international operations for BetMakers, now based in Monmouth Park that oversees the operation. this.
Traction was slow at first, but Baker and Drazin were expecting just as much and talked about it before and after the launch with the May 8 tag.
The growth of fixed odds has been hampered by restrictions that currently limit the ability to place only on-track bets at Monmouth Park on Monmouth races. That is expected to change this week when monmouthbets.com will launch, offering online fixed-odds betting on multiple tracks.
“For a short time, you can bet around the clock on races,” says Baker. “What we’re doing now won’t be 1% of the total turnout when we move it online to Monmouthbets.com, which will be up and running (this week). With the monmouthbets.com website set to go live, that pushes us to the next stage and where we will naturally begin to ‘drop the brakes’ on more existing customers. but with that comes additional content from the United States and then from around the world.”
Baker had hoped to have an online betting app working before Haskell, and even hoped to be able to roll it out on race day. But it didn’t happen.
“We’ve set ourselves a pretty big task to get it up and running (the app) for Haskell Day, and it’s going to stay on track,” Baker said. “D chance just before an hour or two Haskell.”
After watching Haskell Day unfold, Drazin also spoke optimistically about the future of fixed odds.
“I always thought it was going to be slow growth, but people seem to like it,” Drazin said. “They’re comparing the odds to pari-mutuel prices, and around 70% of the odds fixed would be better,” Drazin said. “. “Five years from now, I think 50% of the handle will be fixed odds.”
When fixed odds finally came online, Baker said the list of songs that could be offered during their meeting were: Assiniboia DownsCenturies (belt), Canterbury Park, Caymanas . Park, Colony Downs, Delaware Park, Emerald Downs, Fairmont Park, Grants PassHawthorne (belt), Monmouth, Monmouth in the Meadowlands, and Tampa Bay Downs.
Drazin also knows some of the sport’s top songs, such as Racecourse Saratoga, Del Marand Keenelandthe fixed-odds list held the key to the bet’s success, and the fact that each state’s regulators registered it gave him an idea that popped up when he first consider joining the sports betting legal battle.
“We need big problems, but the regulators are holding them back,” said Drazin, a practicing attorney. In my spare time, I consider litigating the matter. , said Drazin, a practicing attorney. “Any state that says you need to do this legally, they should look into contracts that allow their trackers to send signals abroad for fixed-rate bets. What’s the difference between sending it to Australia or New Jersey? It’s a positive stance, but I’m probably the most aggressive on these issues.”
Odds fixed on the day Haskell bet
Baker said bets on odds, positions and fixed odds displays were tested at around $80,000 on Haskell Day, a number that represents about 12.5% of the pari hand. -mutuel about $650,000 on those bets. That is a solid number given that there are only about eight windows throughout the track where fixed odds bets can be placed.
“Internally, we’re forecasting about 10% of all wins, slots and ongoing shows in this early ‘proof of concept’ phase, and that’s about where we are, actually. It’s a dot for that,” Baker said.
Better yet, it was a good day for BetMakers, who took a solid win of the day.
“It was a very good day. We made the most money ever and wrote the most tickets ever, and we had a winning day. It was a win. as good as a book might expect,” said Haskell estimator Baker, Processing the date at three times the mark for the previous Saturday. “We won a lot on Haskell. Two long shots were the worst result for us. Everyone was focused on them, it was lovely. Jack Christopher would have been a loser for us, but everything else was a winner. “
The idea for bettors is to find the best price for their horse, but for the bookie, the name of the game provides odds that allow them to profit, just as they do in sports betting. . As a result, whoever wins the race can have a significant impact on BetMakers rather than a partial bet, where money is taken out of each bet and transferred to the racecourse, taxes, wallets, etc.
For BetMakers, that means they’ll end up on the plus side in Haskell unless one of the two long-shots, Willard once and King of Hollywood , who are 90-1 and 70-1 respectively, or Jack Christopher favorite 3-5 won. Turned out, Cyberknife ($17.60) won 7-1 on the tote and was priced at a higher fixed price of 8.5 at the time of posting. He also sells for about 10-1 through parts of the day.
Still, Baker said, even if Jack Christopher wins, instead of finishing third, there will be a silver plate.
“For the reasonable loss we would have had on Jack Christopher, we would have had a lot of people with winning tickets and that’s a good trade-off,” Baker said.
The hot part of the price shopping was on display when the morning Haskell line was announced with Taiba as a 7-5 and Jack Christopher favorite. The opening fixed odds for those horses are even money for Jack Christopher and 5-2 for Taiba, close to the final odds on the tote table.
Fixed Rate Bets in United Nations Shares
In another 1st grade day at Monmouth, United Nations Stakes (G1T), winner Adhamo was bet down 9-5 ($5.60) at the time of posting but was offered a flat price of 3-1 earlier in the day.
Baker said the worst day for BetMakers was July 3 when driver Isaac Castillo won six races and a huge fanbase jumped on his team.
“The day Isaac Castillo rode six winners, it was an absolutely tough contest for us, but it’s the game. You win some, you lose some, and you just keep rocking,” Baker said. speak.
Another difference with fixed odds is that decimal odds include dollar bets on the horse. For example, a fixed-odds horse of 8.0 is similar to 7-1 on a tote board and will pay $16 to win. Each track’s screen lists fixed odds with information explaining how the odds are paid out.
“For young people, they get it right away. It’s all designed to appeal to established sports bettors that way. That’s our target audience,” Baker said. “When you’re online, if you want, you can switch between fractional and decimal odds.”
Given that BetMakers has processed around $500,000 in stakes since May 8 from just a handful of windows, Baker is as confident as ever that fixed odds in time will be a boon for Monmouth. and the entire racing industry.
“The most important thing is to get it up and running and see how the customers and their reactions are amazing,” says Baker. “It’s hard not to have a happy customer when they look at their ticket, and they pay more than the bonus.”
