Montana Horse Racing Near Collapse
Horse racing, which has provided family sport and genteel gambling for decades, is in trouble in Montana, and its long-term problems are rapidly coming to a head.
After three years of losing more than $100,000 per season, Great Falls is trying to find a private sponsor for its racing program. A decision may come Monday.
Billings came close to canceling this summer’s Metra Park meet entirely and expects to take the same route as Great Falls once it sees this year’s expected losses. Its final race day of the season is today.
The smaller meets have struggled as well. Miles City dropped horse racing in 1995 and 1996, but it is asking the state Board of Horse Racing for race dates in 1997. The Ravalli Fair in Hamilton dropped racing in 1995, but resumed this year.
Helena’s race meet has been privately sponsored for several years. But race meets in Shelby, Miles City, Hamilton and Kalispell are run by fair boards, as the meets in Great Falls and Billings have been.
Taxpayers have a stake in the outcome, indirectly. While government money by law cannot be used to subsidize gambling or horse racing, losses at fair board-sponsored meets are taken out of fair profits, which would have been put back into maintenance, repairs and improvements at the various fairgrounds, said Great Falls city manager John Lawton. Taxpayer money may then be spent on the fairgrounds.
The past eight years, he said, “the city has put several hundred thousand dollars into repair and maintenance that it won’t get back.”
“It’s going to take some time,” said Sam Murfitt, executive secretary for the Board of Horse Racing. “It didn’t get this way overnight. The industry is aware, maybe for the first time, that we have a problem. We think that we have something worth saving and we’re going to do everything we can to save it.”
A nationwide lack of horses, other forms of legalized gambling in Montana and less-than-aggressive marketing have hurt the industry, as have tax and worker’s compensation laws, Murfitt said.
The Commerce Department has named a task force to come up with ways to put the sport on better footing. The group held the latest in a series of meetings on Saturday.
But all the task force meetings will be pointless if Great Falls and Billings don’t run next year, Murfitt said. Losing those meets would leave the state with so few dates that it wouldn’t attract out-of-state horses.
“You have to have enough days of racing in the state to make it worthwhile to have a horse in training,” Murfitt said.
The task force already has suggested diverting money that had been used for year-end breeder bonuses to purses, so horses are racing for more money on a day-to-day basis.
What they’re trying to find out is, “If the money’s right up front, instead of running for $1,000, if you can run for $1,800, will you breed more horses?” said Tom Tucker, manager of Montana Simulcast Partners. “We’ve got to lure horses from tracks in Washington, Idaho, Wyoming and South Dakota. We’ve got to get horses here and we’ve got to get ‘em here fast.”
Murfitt said the commercial meets in Great Falls and Billings are having the most trouble.