Protections for Bettors Discussed at CHRB Meeting

Speaking during a teleconferenced pari-mutuel and wagering committee meeting of the California Horse Racing Board, an executive with Xpressbet said the advance deposit wagering platform has begun offering alternative selections for large multi-race wagers.

Brick-and-mortar facilities in California currently allow for alternate selections, though some ADW companies do not. Not all bettors choose to provide backup choices when placing multi-race wagers, even when available.

The addition to the Xpressbet wagering platform, in place for the past month, comes in response to a snafu before the Nov. 5 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf (G1T) at Del Mar. Late that afternoon, an onsite veterinarian prematurely scratched Godolphin's Modern Games . He ultimately was put back into the race and competed for purse-money only, winning the race, but bettors who included him in their wagers received no winnings. Winning payoffs returned for the horse that was second across the wire, Tiz the Bomb, as if Modern Games had not been in the race.

Though many wagers on Modern Games were refunded, many Pick 4, Pick 5, and Pick 6 wagers that included Modern Games received the eventual favorite, Dakota Gold , in place of Modern Games unless a different horse was named as an alternate selection when the wager was placed. Those tickets with the favorite by default became losers when Dakota Gold finished off the board.

Boos echoed through the Del Mar grandstand minutes after the race.

The Xpressbet official, Gene Chabrier, vice president of regulatory affairs and business development, said it is too early to tell how well-received their new service is, made available through AmTote.

"We really haven't marketed it yet. So people are just kind of stumbling upon it naturally," he said.

Other ADW providers aren't as far along in having a mechanism to offer alternate wagers, with some cognizant of the time and costs of implementation.

Xpressbet's service was one of several scratch-related topics brought before the committee, headed by commissioners Dennis Alfieri and Damascus Castellanos.

CHRB executive director Scott Chaney and CHRB public information officer Mike Marten noted challenges to other suggestions the regulator has received following the incident's blowback. Those include returning a mistakenly scratched horse to the race, leaving a scratch in place even after an error, or offering consolation payoffs. All have drawbacks, they said.

Concerning consolation payoffs, J. Curtis Linnell, executive vice president of the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau, told the committee a hurdle would be "not so much the tote companies themselves but the industry protocols that we use to send wagering data between the different systems."

Pat Cummings, executive director of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, proposed to the committee to pay off on all multi-race bets. Such action could come by declaring a race such as the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf a non-wagering event or, as Marten suggested, payoffs for "all" in the affected wagering leg. Returns would be lower under either scenario due to more tickets generating payoffs.

Cummings acknowledged his proposal might sound like a dramatic step but that it offered the greatest protection to customers.

"The threat of having to refund all bets will serve as an adequate check on the certainty of officials on the day," Cummings said.

Chaney noted that the circumstances at the Breeders' Cup had "too many veterinarians and not a proper power structure."

Errors "will happen occasionally," Chaney said in discussion with Cummings. "I think you're right to point out that it's exceedingly rare. Unfortunately, we did it on a pretty big scale."

The full CHRB meets March 17 with a report from the pari-mutuel and wagering committee being one topic on its agenda.