New Game in Town

"Fantastic!" exclaimed Howard Samuels, president of New York City's Off-Track Betting Corp. "Another big winner." Samuels, who likes to refer to himself as Howie the Horse, was not speaking of Canonero IIs stunning victory in the Preakness, the second jewel in racing's Triple Crown. He was talking about the $1,151,686 that New Yorkers wagered on the race through O.T.B. "Once more," said Samuels, sounding more like Howie the Hustler, "it's been proved that this city can truly be Fun City."

Fun, maybe, for the plungers who put their money on Canonero II, which paid $12.80 at O.T.B. as opposed to $8.80 at the track. But for Samuels and O.T.B., the first six weeks of operation have been something less than a lark. Like a mudder on macadam, O.T.B. has been tentatively clomping along to cries of "Foul" from racing commissions, labor unions, track owners and horse breeders. Nevertheless, O.T.B. has so far proved a winner with the group that counts most: the bettors. At Grand Central Station last week, one of nine off-track betting sites in the city, the crush of eager bettors--executives with briefcases, housewives toting shopping bags, cab drivers studying tip sheets, secretaries in hot pants--made it rush hour all day long. Although $2 bets account for 92% of the action, O.T.B. is now raking in an average daily handle of $235,000 and should begin to break even in three weeks--a full two months ahead of the projected schedule. Says Samuels: "It's beyond our wildest dreams."

Piece of the Action. Grandiose is the word for some of Samuels' other dreams. Aware that in New York City today about 90% of the bets made with bookies are on sports other than horse racing, he would dearly like to get a piece of that action as well. He is also asking the New York State legislature to 1) exclude winnings from state or local taxes, 2) reduce the legal age for betting from 21 to 18, and 3) expand racing and parimutuel betting to Sundays. Samuels, a self-made millionaire who ran unsuccessfully in New York's Democratic gubernatorial primary before taking the unsalaried O.T.B. job, is as impenetrable to criticism as the bulletproof glass in his betting offices. To the charge that O.T.B. is merely a legalized way of siphoning money away from the poor, he says, "Who's to decide what's gambling and what's entertainment? It's going on. It's here."

Off-track betting may soon be everywhere. Already several states--Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut--have sent delegations to study how New York plays the ponies. Howie the Horse is more than willing to pass on his expertise--for a fee, of course. Indeed, the purely commercial aspect of O.T.B. has been strongly stressed. "The racing industry," says Samuels, "has marketing myopia and is completely insensitive to the fact that they have not been getting their share of the recreation dollar." Hearing that kind of talk, many horse-racing fans wonder whether O.T.B. will affect the sporting aspect of racing. It might.

The Standardbred Owners Association, for one, feels that O.T.B. is getting too much of the recreation dollar. Fearful that O.T.B. will reduce betting at the tracks, they are urging that 2% of the corporation's handle be applied to the purses to maintain their present level. Under the present law the tracks get 1%. "Offtrack betting will cut into our attendance," insists George Morton Levy, president of Roosevelt Raceway, the first track that allowed off-track betting on a regular basis. "We'll have to reduce our staff, and finally the whole thing could go down the drain." The union representing the clerks and maintenance men at some of the tracks agreed and threatened to strike if their salary and job-security demands were not met. Last week, as the Roosevelt season closed and O.T.B. prepared to move the harness-racing action to Yonkers Raceway, Samuels settled with the union and announced that O.T.B. would begin taking bets on regular flat racing at Belmont Park the week of June 6.

The added action would undoubtedly cause the long lines at the O.T.B. windows to grow even longer. Five months ago, Samuels boasted that O.T.B.'s computers would be "the most sophisticated in the world this side of NASA. There's nothing they can't do." As of last week, they were doing exactly that--nothing. Still waiting for the computers to be hooked up with the tracks, O.T.B. clerks have had to do the calculating manually, causing all sorts of delays and foulups. But despite its problems, O.T.B. is out of the starting gates, and with a little luck it may well realize the goal of "adding some fun and excitement to the lives of New Yorkers and contributing greatly to the promotion of horse racing in general." That's straight from the Horse's mouth.

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