Bill would allow greyhound tracks to scale back races

Tracks with card rooms could be more flexible
– and maybe more profitable

By Ludmilla Lelis and Nick Sortal, Staff writer
Copyright © 2011, Orlando Sentinel
Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Daytona Beach Kennel Club and Poker Room runs hundreds of greyhound races a year, even during slow periods for tourism.

That's because state law allows the Daytona club and the state's 12 other dog tracks to have card rooms and casinos only if the club offers a certain number of live dog races throughout the year.

The Legislature may end that requirement, though, in a move that has aligned dog-track owners with animal-protection activists — groups usually at odds. Track owners want to scale back races if they're not profitable, and animal groups support the change on humanitarian grounds.

Dog trainers, however, say the changes would be the death knell for their livelihoods. A drop in the number of races would drive people out of the business, said Todd Byers, who owns a kennel in Daytona Beach.

Bills making their way through state House and Senate committees would allow "decoupling," or lifting the requirement for live races at tracks that maintain a casino or card room. Instead of having a minimum required number of live races, dog tracks could televise "simulcasts" of races held elsewhere. The bill would not directly affect the Sanford Orlando Kennel Club, which has live racing but no card room.

Greyhound racing is "a dying industry in this state," said Sen. Maria Sachs, D-Delray Beach, who sponsored the Senate version of the bill.

Tax revenue from dog tracks has plummeted by more than 96 percent since 1990, when the state collected more than $75 million. Last year, the state collected less than $2.7 million.

Legislators said a change in the law might prompt six or seven tracks to eliminate dog racing, costing the state about $1.4 million a year. But waiving the requirement for live races would help the tracks prosper, said Dan Francati, general manager and president of the Daytona track.

"We're running the greyhounds even when it's not profitable because there is a mandate."

In 1996, the state allowed dog tracks to open card rooms if the tracks kept running at least 90 percent of the live races that were scheduled that year. The addition of card rooms was intended to help struggling tracks.

The Daytona track, for example, is required to have 409 races a year.

"That's a lot more races than we want to run," Francati said. "Take that mandate away from us and we'd run it based on what makes sense for the business, rather than running the greyhounds when tourism is down." He said the track would drop about 50 races a year.

Patrick Biddix, managing partner of Melbourne Greyhound Park and Club 52 poker room, said his property would drop live racing. "We still have a very productive and profitable [simulcast] business, and we do very well with poker," he said.

Animal activists, who have been critical of the way dogs are treated, have joined track owners in supporting the change.The proposal would lead to fewer greyhound injuries and fewer dogs living in confinement, said Carey Theil, executive director of GREY2K USA, a nonprofit organization aimed at eliminating dog racing.

Dog trainers are those most opposed to decoupling. A total of 3,000 jobs related to dog racing are at stake, said Joe Trudden, a Miami dog trainer. He said he arrived at that figure by adding the average number of trainers, greyhound-farm workers and track staff members that handle the dogs.

"If you're scaling back races, we're not going to make enough money to survive," said Byers, the Daytona Beach kennel owner, who has been involved in greyhound training for more than 20 years. "We'd be forced to go out of business and would be replaced by slots and poker rooms."