How is it that overall sports betting continues to boom, but that betting on horse races — “the sport of kings” — is in a funk?
The amount wagered on stick-and-ball leagues like the NFL, NBA, and MLB seemingly ticks up every month in the United States. Meanwhile, pari-mutuel wagering on thoroughbred horse racing is trending down.
In November, New York customers bet almost $2.3 billion using apps such as BetMGM, DraftKings, and FanDuel, up from $2.1 billion a year earlier. Bettors placed more than $14.5 billion in mobile sports wagers in the Empire State from April 2024 to the end of November.
For the same month, Equibase reported $921.1 million in bets on thoroughbred horse races in the U.S. That was up about 1.2% from November 2023, but year-to-date handle was still down by 2.5%.
Then, in December, bettors staked $682.1 million on U.S. thoroughbred races, down 14.4% from a year earlier. Total wagering for 2024 was about $11.3 billion, down 3.35% from 2023.
Charging into 2025 like... 🏃 💨
— Breeders' Cup (@BreedersCup) January 6, 2025
📷: @EclipseSports pic.twitter.com/lAvSgxU20O
U.S. Pari-mutuel handle now declined four out of the past five years., the only exception an 11.8% increase in 2021 following COVID-19-affected 2020. Meanwhile, according to Covers' revenue tracker, sportsbook handle for 2024 should blow past the $121.1 billion wagered in 2023.
“What’s particularly alarming is that the decline [in pari-mutuel wagering] is occurring at a moment in U.S. history when it’s easier to bet on horse racing than it has ever been,” wrote the Paulick Report's Andrew Cohen earlier this week. “In many jurisdictions, adults can bet on horse racing on their phones. There are millions of potential new customers to entice.”
It’s easier than ever to wager on stick-and-ball games as well, and people do it in record numbers. Seemingly every week there's a new story about online sports betting’s prominence and problems, including advertising that critics claim is annoying and ubiquitous.
There are also companies like DraftKings and FanDuel that have their own horse racing apps sports bettors can use. However, if they do use them, they don't use them enough to stop pari-mutuel handle bleeding. Overall sports betting is going up and wagering on horse racing is going down, even though they're both widely available through online gambling sites.
So the rising tide of legal sports betting isn’t lifting every boat. Horse racing may get a sports betting-related bump at times, but the craze in NFL, NBA and other league wagering isn't propelling pari-mutuel handle upwards.
This is bad for the thousands of people the horse racing industry employs, either directly or indirectly. It’s also bad for fans of the sport. The stagnation in handle has happened alongside nearly 50 race tracks closing since 2000, including the oldest track in the U.S. last month, Freehold Raceway.
“If horse racing doesn’t change soon, it won’t be here,” said Bill Pascrell III, a partner at Princeton Public Affairs Group and a longtime gaming industry lobbyist, in an interview with Covers this week.
It's not all bad
It’s also kind of confusing: people will seemingly bet on anything — Coloradans bet $17.3 million on table tennis in November — but are wagering less on a longtime gambling staple.
And horse racing still has good days, where bettors flock from all over to wager, including those who normally stick to human athletes. The Kentucky Derby is one such day. The Breeders’ Cup in the fall was another.
FanDuel reported handle and active users were up 10% and 15%, respectively, for the 2024 Triple Crown season compared to 2023. The number of users wagering on the races via FD was also up more than 20% year-over-year, with more than 550,000 customers using the operator’s app.
Over 800,000 customers played the ponies with FanDuel or TVG, another Flutter Entertainment brand, during the Kentucky Derby-Preakness Stakes-Belmont Stakes stretch. FanDuel said this was “double digit percentage growth” over the 2023 Triple Crown.
Yet FD is something of an exception to the rule. Its parent company, Flutter, has longstanding ties to the racing industry and a TV network dedicated to showing races year-round. The sport is a bigger priority for FanDuel than it may be for other operators.
Joe Asher, the former CEO of William Hill U.S., told the audience at the Jockey Club’s annual roundtable conference this past August he used to say they did great on horse racing five days a year. Those were when the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, Belmont, and Breeders’ Cup were running.
“It was the other 360 days a year that were a challenge,” Asher noted.
No quick fixes
So there are mixed signals. Overall, though, the arrow is pointing down for pari-mutuel wagering.
"Horse racing in America is a beautiful, historical, legacy industry," Pascrell said. "But, like traditional lottery players, the horse racing punters are aging out. And the reason they're aging out is because they've been betting for decades and are into their 70s and 80s and beyond, and they're used to the pari-mutuel system."
Pascrell and others have worked for years to find new ways of drawing younger bettors toward horse racing.
#6 MOONLIT DRIVE ($35.80) wins on debut at Aqueduct with @jockeyfranco in the saddle for @nevinracing and owner @jayemesssam. Congratulations to all of the connections with this 3yo filly by @LanesEndFarms' Quality Road. pic.twitter.com/nNnPBjs8DD
— FanDuel Racing (@FanDuel_Racing) January 10, 2025
One effort is further legalization of fixed-odds wagering, popular in Australia and the UK and runs alongside pari-mutuel betting, which also remains popular. However, in the U.S., fixed odds are only legal and available in two states: Colorado and New Jersey.
Pascrell said there are “a dozen” other states considering fixed odds. Still, until they officially allow it, stick-and-ball bettors used to locking in bets at an unchangeable price — even if a key player is ruled out before the game — could be confused by the ups and downs of the pari-mutuel system.
“I've seen young folks not understanding that when they put $10 on a horse to win at 7/1, by the time the jump starts, the odds have changed, because the big whales have come in and changed the odds,” Pascrell said.
The parlay problem
Those "whales" can include so-called computer-assisted wagering (CAW) groups that can swoop in on any given race and push down the odds of a horse with their big bets. While the CAWs may add to the handle, they can also change the odds that leave casual bettors scratching their heads as to why the payout on their winning wagers are suddenly much lighter.
Furthermore, Pascrell noted no fixed odds means that horse races can’t be part of the parlays casual and newer sports bettors love so much.
Whereas someone right now could have an NFL side, an NBA total, and an NHL player prop all in a single parlay, they can’t add a horse running in the eighth race at Aqueduct. And while there are ways of parlaying horses, the method of doing so feels antiquated compared to the technology for today’s sports parlays, especially the same-game parlays and SGP+s.
“Those parlays are huge for the industry,” Pascrell said.
Silver bullets are for werewolves
There's a healthy list of other considerations, and Pascrell said it will take a “multi-channel approach” to address the decline in pari-mutuel handle.
Some of that handle may very well be bleeding to online betting on other sports, which compete with horse racing for gambling dollars. Horse racing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea for various reasons, including concerns about the health and safety of the horses themselves. There were also fewer races and race days in the U.S. last year than 2023, meaning fewer wagering opportunities.
Then there are even more basic things to think about, such as the horse racing advertising and marketing that now pales in comparison to that of online sports betting in the U.S.
“Why does sports betting handle continue to grow year over year? The answer to that … is that every other advertisement during a football or basketball game is a sports betting ad,” Pascrell said. “I don't remember the last time I ever saw an ad for horse racing except the week leading up to like the Belmont or the Kentucky Derby.”
Moreover, it’s easy to form an opinion about a football game and express that thought with a bet. It’s tougher to read a racing form and determine which horse you think will be the fastest.
In August, Asher (who now chairs the board of trustees for the non-partisan Wilson Center think-tank) said he’d like to see a “simplified way” for people to make an "informed" wager on a horse race.
“People are already spending a lot of time consuming information about the game they want to bet on,” Asher said. “No extra work is required. Now, contrast that with betting on the horses, where you have to buy and read the Daily Racing Form or some other handicapping publication and then study them in order to form an opinion on what to bet.”
#BreedersCup champ Sierra Leone is resting up for his 2025 campaign!pic.twitter.com/g9vgPrejAq
— Breeders' Cup (@BreedersCup) January 8, 2025
Horse racing has the “content” to offer bettors, Asher said. Those races are run all the time, including outside football season. There are also millions of Americans already making bets online.
“What I am suggesting is that there is revenue to be had and new fans to engage through sports betting beyond a few days a year, and that the juice is worth the squeeze,” Asher said.
The 2024 figures for pari-mutuel handle suggest the horse racing industry has yet to make converts of enough sports bettors to offset its losses.
It's a new year, though, and while there may be no “silver bullet,” there are bullets that may yet be fired.
“I think horse racing is going to continue to decline in terms of handle until the sports betting operators get more in sync with the tracks and some of the companies out there that offer fixed odds,” Pascrell said. “I think there's hope, but until things change, update and upgrade and try to bring a younger player into it, the handle is going to continue to decline.”
