AmTote, Roberts: Communications Outage Caused Tote Woes

The tote problems that disrupted racing at Tampa Bay Downs and other tracks across the country were blamed on a communications outage, according to a joint statement March 10 between AmTote International and Roberts Communications Network. 

1/ST Racing's AmTote is a technology & services provider to numerous tracks, while Roberts provides the communication link between AmTote and its client.  

The parties said that a March 9 network failure "resulted in wagering disruptions at numerous racetracks and guest locations operating through the Mid-Atlantic hub of AmTote." This includes Tampa Bay Downs, which ran the $400,000 Tampa Bay Derby (G3) without wagering. 

The outage caused the post time for the Tampa Bay Derby, the card's 11th race, to be delayed by about 30 minutes and the 12th race on the card to be canceled. 

"Everyone needs to stop blaming AmTote," said Todd Roberts, President and CEO of RCN.

In an interview Sunday on YouTube with National Thoroughbred Alliance's Pat Cummings, 1/ST Racing president Aidan Butler said that not only did the primary link to the tracks go down, but so did the secondary link. He noted that AmTote never went down. 

"Probably about 20 individual entities that were affected by this," Butler said. "It was an issue, a connectivity issue in the Mid-Atlantic that took out not only us, AmTote, but took out a lot of other companies as well. It was a huge (Internet Service Provider) issue."

A call to Butler was not returned. 

He added that at the time of the interview, RCN was still down and AmTote needed to find "another integrated network who could then put the totes back up" for Sunday's racing.

But in their statement, AmTote and Roberts said that their teams worked through the night to restore service so that wagering activities "could take place (Sunday) as normal."

AmTote and Roberts said that at least three major telecom/internet bandwidth providers in the geographic region that services the AmTote hub were impacted by the outage.

AmTote and Roberts said the disruptions were "not caused by any failure in RCN equipment or operations." RCN has "not yet received an official reason-for-outage report from its third-party providers specifying a reason for this failure." 

"This is really unacceptable going forward that we could find ourselves in this position. It doesn't matter whose fault it is," said Butler, who described the overall tote infrastructure as "old."

Butler said there will be a "full investigation" that looks at more than fixing the issue, but preventative measures as well. He wants to work with partners and others in the industry to "render this impossible" to happen again. 

Whatever the cause of the outage, it does not resolve some of the issues inflicted upon race fans and tracks. 

Asked how the outage impacted its handle or whether it would be made whole from any financial losses, Tampa Bay Downs vice president of marketing and publicity Margo Flynn in an email wrote she didn't "have any answers to these questions at the moment."

Earlier Sunday, the track announced that all win, place and show, exacta, trifecta, superfecta, and Super High 5 wagers on the Tampa Bay Derby "will be refunded, as will the late Pick 4 which began with the ninth race." Additionally, multi-race wagers involving the Tampa Bay Derby "will be paid ... with 'ALL' runners counting as winners of the 11th race.

All win, place and show, exacta, trifecta, superfecta, Super High 5, and Daily Double wagers made involving the 12th race "will be refunded, as will wagers made on the late Pick 4." 



The late 50-cent Pick 3 wager will be paid out as a 5/ALL/ALL winning ticket, with a 50-cent wager returning $2.05.