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HANDICAPPING INSIGHTS FEBRUARY 4, 2011 by Dick Powell U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn dismissed a final objection to the Chapter 9 Municipal reorganization of New York City OTB that was filed by the union that represents most of its workers. New York City OTB has ceased operations, has no workers and has disbursed whatever cash it had left to cover outstanding checks. What was once the nation's largest, legal bookmaking operation is no more. The gory details of what happened are left for others. But, having grown up in New York City when the OTB began, its presence provided a lot of memories that are still vivid almost 40 years later. The New York State legislature enabled the creation of off-track betting in 1971, and branches soon sprung up throughout the five boroughs. I grew up in Staten Island and we wound up having one of the first OTB parlors in the city. It was located in a storefront in a neighborhood called Stapleton. Stapleton back then was still a thriving business community with a big Schaefer Brewery right in the middle of it. There was a small park in the center of it which sat at the bottom of a hill. The OTB parlor was on one of the corners of the perimeter of the park and it was quite popular -- to a fault. Back then, the concept of OTB was to provide a venue to make a bet on a New York race if you could not make it out to the track. Each OTB parlor had a security guard whose job was to enforce the "no loitering" policy that was in effect. You went inside to make a bet and then you left. Since there was a race about every half hour, this meant that a lot of people had nowhere to go in between since they could not hang out inside the OTB parlor. Outside the OTB parlor was a mass of horseplayers. There was a methadone treatment clinic right up the street. It was hard to tell the different clientele. OTB was meant to be inconvenient betting and we all hung out on the sidewalk or in the park with the methadone clinic regulars. Already, the image of OTB was beginning to develop and it was not real pretty. The Stapleton OTB was on a number of bus lines and there was a train station down the street so the parlor was easily accessible. I don't know whose idea it was to put it there but it was brilliant as it hit the right demographic. Betting was part of the fabric of life on Staten Island and OTB fit right in. One anecdote about Stapleton: it actually had a NFL franchise. You can look it up. The Stapleton Stapes were part of the NFL for four years from 1929 through 1932. Future NFL Hall of Famer Ken Strong played for them for a few years. Thompson Stadium, the home of the Staten Island Stapletons, is now a housing project. Years later, other housing projects were built nearby and one of them was famous for spawning the Wu Tang Clan with ODB and Method Man. You can't make this stuff up. Back to OTB. During this time, racing in New York probably had its greatest decade. Harness racing at Yonkers and Roosevelt was thriving and NYRA had a decade that was immortal with three Triple Crown winners and all-time greats like Ruffian and Forego racing there. OTB business boomed during this time as racing was still a major league sport and was covered as such. One thing that OTB did back then was a television marketing campaign that has never been equaled. In the early 1970s, they had a series of television commercials that featured sports greats like Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Jim Brown, Sam Huff and Rocky Graziano. They were done in a humorous way that played on each one's unique way of picking winners. Graziano always won and when questioned by the others, he would slap himself in the head with the palm of his hand and say, "I don't know, it just hit me!" The goal of advertising is to be memorable and these commercials are still remembered by anyone around New York City back then. For the first decade of operation, OTB probably was a net positive on horse racing. Even though they didn't pay anywhere near their fair share to the racing industry, they brought horse racing to more people than ever before. There used to be an OTB parlor at the bottom of the escalator going down into Penn Station off Seventh Avenue in Manhattan that was packed every day. Not anymore. As time went by, OTB, with a very big foot in the door, began to lobby for a different business model. Eventually, the no loitering policy was eliminated so you could actually hang out in the parlor. Tape-delayed audio calls of the races began so you could hear Chick Anderson or Dave Johnson call the races. It wasn't in real time but who cared. They were the only game in town and you used your imagination and the racecaller's skill to paint your own video picture of the race. OTB used to sponsor a Saturday afternoon television show from NYRA that showed the feature race and the ninth race triple. Hosted by Frank Wright along with Charlsie Cantey, it gave a lot of us an education in horse racing. On Thursday and Saturday nights, Stan Bergstein hosted a similar show devoted to harness racing that showcased all the big harness races run in New York. Harvey Pack became famous in New York City for his re-creation of horse races on WNBC radio. He would wait for the race to be official and when the chart was made available, he would re-create the race as if it was live. When perennial runner-up Jacques Who finally broke his maiden, Pack added trumpets blaring as if he won the Kentucky Derby (G1) itself. Racing was fun and even cool with its hip marketing campaign. Another anecdote: my wife owns a dressage horse that is sired by a Warmblood stallion out of a Thoroughbred mare by Jacques Who. The first time she entered him in a dressage show, he finished second. Gradually, it all went wrong. The tracks and horsemen wanted more revenue from OTB wagering. OTB relented but demanded more racing. Year-round racing, which was unheard of back then (winter racing was conducted at Bowie Race Course in Maryland) began around 1977 as OTB got what it wanted. Eventually, OTB received live audio calls and eventually video was installed in the parlors as technology make it possible. The end result was giving horseplayers more reasons not to go to the track. And, it was not all OTB's fault. New York City had a period of financial collapse and the infrastructure for mass transit and auto travel began to crumble. Getting around the City got harder and harder and more expensive every year. Going to the track became a major effort. During one of the first financial crises, New York City government petitioned the State Legislature to charge a 5 percent surcharge on winning bets. To show you how disingenuous politicians are, they claimed that it would raise $200 million for the city coffers. Nothing of the sort happened other than horseplayers suffered the first major takeout increase that had endured in years. When the financial crisis passed, do you think the politicians repealed the surcharge? Tele-theater legislation was passed in the 1980s which allowed a customer to pay an admission and receive track odds. They had food and beverages and were designed to spend the day in. Manhattan had three at one point but Staten Island got nothing. We were always out of sync politically with the rest of the city and even though it would have been a huge hit, it never happened. The Stapleton branch began to suffer and the overall image of OTB parlors in New York City was about one step ahead of homeless shelters in the eyes of the non-racing public. Phone betting helped bring a resurgence of business but most customers had to pay the dreaded surcharge. OTB worked out a deal with NYRA that enabled them to show the races in-home via cable TV in exchange for more revenue. It worked for a while but all it did was take more customers away from the track. New York City OTB went out of business for a lot of reasons and has left a void. Some business went to NYRA and it's been great to hear about Aqueduct actually having a viable business again with real bodies in the building. Despite all of its faults, New York City OTB did create a lot of racing fans -- one of which I am quite familiar with. (In the interest of full disclosure, I did some TV work for New York City OTB sometimes when they were up here at Saratoga and still do television work for Capital OTB.)
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