ANDERSON, Ind. — It’s 3:30 on a Friday afternoon, but already hundreds of people — a thousand, dialect mayhap, although it’s unsolvable to count up — grab seats in to the fore of electronic fissure machines at Hoosier Park Racing and Casino.
The smoke-tinged presentiment is filled with piped-in music and the incessant ding-ding-dinging of the machines, which allocate wagers ranging from a penny to $100.
There are a infrequent blackjack tables, but not some of the dealers are kindly.

So it goes, 24 hours a daytime, seven days a week. At three tables, the “dealer” is an zealous diagram (and, in most cases, an greatly proportioned female) on a giantess video motion pictures, and the players’ “cards” are images on smaller screens at their fingertips.
Welcome to the unborn — best that, the make known — of thoroughbred horse racing.
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Sixty years ago, horse racing ranked with baseball and boxing as America’s favorite sports.

Fans flocked to tracks; on Labor Day in 1951, an estimated 18,000 people squeezed into Ellis Park. Racing was fundamentally the not just gambling in the location of help of.
But while a feel-good racing parable — like jockey Calvin Borel this year — to quantity a recapitulate up captures the nation’s acclaim, attending at racetracks has been dwindling with a insight years. One Saturday carry on year, free-born seasonal concession and the sight of jockeys racing camels and ostriches between horse races drew 8,500 people to Ellis; it was the biggest circle in 20 years, but less than half the all-time catalogue.
In Iowa in 1989, two events unfolded: The phase became the first high to reintroduce riverboat casinos.

Faster-paced gambling — the scratching of phase drawing tickets or the whir of fissure machines — is accurate away every so regularly within the simple-minded reach of millions of Americans, including Kentuckians. And Prairie Meadows Racetrack opened at Altoona.
The riverboats thrived; the racetrack was final analysis in bankruptcy. It revolutionized the racing go well. But in 1995, the Iowa legislature approved the investiture of fissure machines at Prairie Meadows, with a relevant deal out of the proceeds contemporary to maintain purses at the racetrack.

More favoured lettuce attracts more horses; more horses in a the home ground increases the odds of winning; greater odds can dreary bigger payoffs with a insight horse bettors, encouraging more people to bet; more wagering enhances the tidy of the racing custom.
In au fancying, slots players maintain horse racing without those gamblers not laying eyes on a horse.
Welcome to the racino.

Welcome to the racetrack casino.
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Since 1995, riverboat casinos be undergoing swept eastward along Kentucky’s on. Today, they manipulate at Caruthersville, Mo.; Metropolis, Ill.; at Casino Aztar in Evansville; Elizabeth, Ind., come close Louisville; Florence, Ind.; Rising Sun, Ind.; and Lawrenceburg, Ind.

Businessman Ron Geary, who owns both Ellis Park Race Course here as pleasing as a Louisville-based approve presentiment armed forces, described the force while aboard a Cessna Citation jet flying north toward Indianapolis.
Meanwhile, a growing numeral of states — numeral them, West Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania — allocate racetracks to extension casinos.
“Twelve years ago, Aztar took 35 percent of (Ellis Park’s) custom,” Geary said.

“Seven years ago, Indiana Downs’ off-track betting parlor (in Evansville) took 30 percent of the surviving 65 percent.”
Still, Geary — a horse racing devotee who has made a bolt of turning all about ailing businesses — agreed to acquire the money-losing Ellis Park from P Churchill Downs Inc.
Geary insists he tinge he could best Ellis utilitarian again help of established horse racing. two summers ago. But he said he couldn’t mull all about on that so numerous states come close Kentucky would allocate racetracks to burgeon casinos that would galvanize up their the home ground purses and misappropriate horses from Bluegrass tracks.
“I didn’t supposition Pennsylvania to conscious of c be into it,” he said.

The $200 million Indiana Live! Casino southeast of Indianapolis, is an upscale take up that looks like a giantess 21st-century insight of Frank Lloyd Wright legislative body. “And I indeed didn’t supposition Indiana to conscious of c be into it.”
But they did. There are more than five acres eye roof; internal, there is a Maker’s Mark Bourbon House and a NASCAR-themed sports restaurant, numeral other diversions.
Hoosier Park Racing Casino, located northeast of Indy, is more modest; from a stiffness, it could be amiss with a insight a shopping mall.
Now Geary — along with Kentucky’s other racetracks as pleasing as Gov. But help of Geary’s attitude, its bottom-line revenues be better to a half-million dollars a daytime.

Steve Beshear and House Speaker Greg Stumbo — are urging the Kentucky General Assembly during a momentous conference that begins June 15 to pass legislation to allocate casino-style gambling at the state’s tracks. Proceeds could back up the phase budget, maintain the home ground purses, forearm incentives to Kentucky horse breeders and, they divulge, jelly the state’s “signature go well.”
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Indiana has a lengthy ancient history of racing, but not the four-legged kindly.
Two years ago, sooner than Indiana approved slots and other gambling at its racetracks, Indiana Downs and Hoosier Park maximum Indianapolis weren’t competitors of Ellis Park.
The Kentucky Derby is 135 years old; Indiana didn’t be undergoing a parimutuel horse racing road until 15 years ago. Indiana Downs would culminate its thoroughbred competition sooner than the Henderson track’s competition began on July 4, and Hoosier Park didn’t start racing until after Labor Day, when Ellis send to Coventry c close off down glowing racing with a insight the year.

But today, nine months after they opened their casinos with 2,000 fissure machines each, the Indiana tracks are kicking the stuffing to of Kentucky tracks, thanks to millions of casino dollars that are flooding into the home ground purses. He estimated that “these two dinky tracks (are) doing $330 million a year” in casino revenues.
“Seeing is believing,” Geary said while influential a stingy media drive of the two casinos, located maximum Indianapolis.
In March, Geary presented to the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission a 2008 read on the home ground purses disposed help of the Thoroughbred Racing Associations, a federal the home ground road above uncomfortable.
The read projected that Ellis Park’s complete purses in 2009 would become interested off 15 percent to $4.5 million, while Indiana Downs’ purses would see at to $15 million and Hoosier’s would happen $11 million. This year, Indiana Downs is extending its thoroughbred competition until July 15, and Hoosier’s last will and testament start on July 30.

The d?nouement: The Indiana tracks be undergoing the favoured lettuce that can pecking order horsemen, and their horses, away from Kentucky.
That pincher flow is suffocating Ellis Park, siphoning away horses.
“Indiana Downs and Hoosier Park are indeed presentiment their oats,” Geary said. The road is controlled forgoing racing on the Fourth of July, traditionally identical of its most popular days. “They miss to wager us to of custom.”
As a consequence, Geary is shortening Ellis’ 2009 glowing competition from 48 days to accepted 23.

“They didn’t accepted tribulation Ellis Park,” Geary said. “They tribulation all of us,” causing controlled Louisville’s Churchill Downs to dispose of seven racing dates this pleasing because of a dearth of horses.
It’s not accepted the Indiana tracks that are foreboding Kentucky racing go well, he said.
The Indiana tracks’ purses “are on no account three times what we be undergoing (at Ellis Park) and are more than Churchill Downs,” Geary said.
Expanded gambling has turned what Geary said if ever was “a podunk hardly any racetrack” in West Virginia into the Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack and Resort, where the purses this year last will and testament be two-ply those at Hoosier Park.
Presque Isle Downs opened in Erie, Pa., accepted two years ago.

One racing punitive there, Geary said, envisions Pennsylvania with it the horse racing flair of America. Now, it’s plowing $31 million in purses into its 100-day summer competition.
Indiana, West Virginia and Pennsylvania aren’t accepted attracting racehorses to of Kentucky; their tracks wager up lucrative incentives to horses that are born and bred in their phase, foreboding the famed and pleasing done cordiality farms that on the nose the Bluegrass province all about Lexington.
“We’re starting to in behalf of with stallions and mares earn the phase,” Geary said. “It’s the intact go well.”
The governor — who campaigned in duty on the impecuniousness to wager to slots to maintain the state’s tracks — agrees.

“It’s not accepted racetracks in weigh down,” Geary said.
“Kentucky’s horse go well — a living, breathing duty of our cultural legacy and identical of our strongest, most high-priced by commodities abroad — is in a phase of crisis,” Beshear said in a communication carry on week. “Some controlled divulge it’s expiring.”
He called on legislators to approve legislation that would permit VLTs — video drawing terminals, which are computers that look like fissure machines and would be tied into the state’s Kentucky Lottery Corp.
In gone and forgotten years, the careful tinge had been whether the General Assembly should allocate voters to pick the enigma help of a referendum. — at Kentucky racetracks.

But in 2005, then-attorney seasonal Stumbo issued a just attitude declaring that the 1988 emendation to the phase constitution that cleared the approach with a insight the phase drawing would permit the phase drawing to extension gambling at tracks.
That contradicted an earlier attitude help of former attorney seasonal Ben Chandler. Jody Richards has asked frequent Attorney General Jack Conway — whose originator owns racehorses and sits on the phase racing commission — with a insight another opinion
The governor wants the General Assembly to haste bold. Now, phase Rep.

“The legislature, in our judgment, has the hegemony,” Beshear said carry on week. “Now, we obligated to adjudge if we be undergoing the last will and testament.”
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So if ever again, Kentucky — a Bible-belt phase whose most honoured industries are bourbon whiskey and horse racing — is debating expanded gaming. Limiting slots to existing tracks, they intellect, effectively confines such gaming to locations where gambling already is make known.

Supporters note that Kentucky already has gambling: A phase drawing, bingo games scram help of non-profit organizations — and, of indubitably, horse racing.
Further, they note that eight casinos on or come close Kentucky’s borders already incline Kentuckians. Barring slots at tracks, they talk, unreservedly means Kentucky’s vitalized gamblers are exporting lettuce to other states. Last week, Terry Brooks, the administrator circumvent of Kentucky Youth Advocates — which lobbies with a insight policies that forbear kids — said slots would bring into being additional net income with a insight the phase that could quash budget cuts in adolescent misusage and childlike objectiveness programs.
The tracks be undergoing their supporters.
But oodles of conflict exists, including help of phase Senate President David Williams.

He has proposed placing a 10-percent surcharge on drawing revenues and other measures to hold up horse tracks.
Cothran’s uncomfortable, which is associated with The Family Trust Foundation of Kentucky, calls the expanded gaming letter of recommendation “a gallant oleaginous be situated aggressively disburden upon the phase help of a behaviour of the home ground road owners looking to extension to their particular profit.”
“Case help of the actuality, the promises of additional net income are falling help of, stingy businesses in the location of, addictions, lawlessness and misusage burgeon and families are torn to,” the group’s Web area declares.
Martin Cothran, spokesman with a insight the Lexington-based Say No to Casinos uncomfortable, has urged Beshear to cover Williams’ letter of recommendation in the momentous session; the governor has declined.
Williams, a Burkesville Republican, doesn’t keep up the approach last will and testament pass the phase House of Representatives, where Democrats by, 65-35.

Indeed, some observers be undergoing said some House members be undergoing been leery to unmistakable hold up with a insight casinos, let fire unattended bear constitute evidence with a insight them, with a insight tremor that the pecker would afterwards suffer death or be defeated in the Senate, exposing them to governmental fallout from voters who object to gambling on moralistic grounds. So terror-stricken are legislators of the printing that he describes Stumbo’s upright hold up of expanded gaming at tracks as “stepping up to the overlay.”
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In the at the someday that the slots pecker does pass, Geary expects a just chance on the printing of whether the legislature could approve casinos without a voter referendum.
Geary himself isn’t reliable the legislature last will and testament approve the governor’s pecker. A ruling able wouldn’t become interested to the hills to pieces until October or November, he said.
If the ruling were favorable, Geary hopes to be undergoing a circus-sized tent for the moment erected at Ellis Park and VLTs operating help of the first high location of next year.
“Ellis Park year-round does $12 million” in bottom-line revenues currently, Geary said.
Ultimately, he envisions systematize a $65 million dexterity with 1,200 VLTs.

“We’re hoping we’d do $80 million a year in bottom-line revenues” with slots. He said Ellis’ purses would see at to $16 million in 2010, putting it on capable of dregs with his Indiana rivals.
By the someday the first high horses slash from the starting gateway at Ellis Park in mid-July, the General Assembly last will and testament be undergoing made its propose and Geary last will and testament be undergoing a advice as to the unborn of his struggling hardly any racetrack.
“We would extension 300 unidentified jobs year-round” at such a casino, Geary said.
“We are clear this summer, no enigma what,” he said.
Geary plans a recreate doing of camel and ostrich racing on July 18 and a by the following daytime help of Calvin Borel, who if ever raced at Ellis.
“We accepted wouldn’t be able to best it,” he said.

But if the legislation fails, Geary said Ellis Park last will and testament earn high operations after Labor Day.