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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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NOVEMBER 2005
Betting on all but the dogs
DELEVAN, DAYTONA, LACONIA––The 15-year-old Geneva Lakes Greyhound Track in Delavan, Wisconsin ended live racing on November 6, 2005, with telecasting of races at other tracks due to end in December.
About 450 of the estimated 1,000 dogs housed at Delavan were offered for adoption by the local chapter of Greyhound Pets of America, formed in 1989. Greyhound Pets of America is the largest U.S. greyhound rescue group to be partially subsidized by the greyhound industry.
Of the five greyhound tracks opened in Wisconsin during the early 1990s, only the Dairyland Greyhound Park in Kenosha is still operating. Geneva Lakes Greyhound Track general manager blamed the closures on competition from Native American gambling casinos. The casino operators have managed to keep the Wisconsin greyhound tracks from expanding into other forms of gambling.
The Iowa Racing & Gaming Commission on October 13 rejected an application from the National Cattle Congress to reopen the Waterloo Greyhound Park, closed in 1996, as hub of a riverboat casino complex.
The increasing economic anxiety of the U.S. greyhound industry and allure of other forms of gambling to help make ends meet were underscored in Rhode Island by federal prison sentences meted out on October 28 to Daniel Bucci, former general manager of the Lincoln Park track in New Hampshire, and Nigel Potter, former chief executive of Wembley PLC, the British-based parent firm.
“They were convicted in August 2005 of conspiring to bribe former Rhode Island House Speaker John Harwood with up to $4 million to muster support for more gambling machines at the park and to block a rival casino proposed by the Narragansett Indian Tribe,” reported Associated Press.
Florida Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering data shows that the money wagered on live greyhound races at the Daytona Kennel Club fell from $22 million in 2000 to $12.9 million in 2004. Yet track poker receipts rose from $707,895 to $3.4 million.
Statewide, Florida greyhound racing tax and fee income as recently as 1997 amounted to $33.7 million, but dropped to just $12.7 million in 2004––a 62% decline. State poker income increased from $336,469 to nearly $1.7 million during the same years, for an increase of 397%.
Three Broward County greyhound tracks on September 28, 2005 won from the Florida Court of Appeals the opportunity to add slot machines to their gambling options.
Massachusetts attorney general Tom Reilly, expected to run for governor in 2006, meanwhile “accepted eight donations totaling $4,000 from members and associates of the Carney family, which operates the Raynham-Taunton Greyhound Park,” reported Casey Ross of the Boston Herald on October 26.
This was a week before the Massa-chusetts senate passed a bill which would allow greyhound tracks to install as many as 2,000 slot machines apiece on their premises ––“significantly benefiting an industry that Reilly oversees,” Ross noted.
“Reilly, who has been publicly quiet on the issue, has previously accepted $500 donations from other racetrack owners such as Charles Sarkis, who owns Wonderland, and Joe O’Donnell, who holds the controlling share in Suffolk Downs,” Ross added.
The Ross expose broke a month after Grey2K USA began collecting signatures on petitions to place on the 2006 ballot an initiative which would end greyhound racing in Massachusetts by 2008, while increasing the penalties for breeding fighting dogs and abusing police and service dogs. Grey 2K USA will need 66,000 signatures from Massa-chusetts registered voters. Grey2K USA grew out of a 2000 initiative campaign to end dog racing that failed to win approval by barely 1% of the vote.
The Lakes Region Greyhound Park in Belmont, New Hampshire, closed on April 27, 2005, may reopen in January 2006 as a project of the Torguson Gaming Group of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
According to John Koziol of the Laconia Citizen, “Formally operated by the New Hampshire Gaming Association, the track has been rocked by two separate investigations into alleged illegal activities since January 2005. Following the indictment of two former managers in New York on illegal gambling and money-laundering charges, New Hampshire Gaming agreed to surrender its license to the state Pari-Mutuel Commission, and also agreed to put the track up for sale.
“Moultonboro developer David Johnston and a group of investors bid $4.1 million for the facility,” Koziol added, “but that deal fell apart in June after federal authorities broke up a drug-trafficking and money-laundering ring that was allegedly operated from the track. Johnston then approached Torguson, who pioneered casino gambling on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. Torguson eventually bought Johnston’s rights to buy the track from New Hampshire Gaming.”
Torguson appears to have acquired the Lakes Region Greyhound Park in anticipation of eventually being allowed to operate slot machines there.
In August 2005 a consortium of Nevada gaming firms bought Rockingham Park, of Salem, New Hampshire, apparently with the same strategy in mind.
The Seabrook Greyhound Park a few days earlier cut losses by reducing the racing schedule and laying off half its staff.