March Madness sports betting craze raises concerns over predatory gambling<\/a><\/p>\n“When Hawthorne is not accepting bets in person, we’re leaving money on the table,” said Andrew Mack with the Illinois Harness Horsemen’s Association. “The state is losing out. The horsemen are losing out.”<\/p>\n
Some Off Track Betting locations said they are also losing out on a portion of what they would make on the day. Operating partner Kristopher Gillis said he’s had cancellations at his company’s two OTB sites.<\/p>\n
“We planned for the big party,” Gillis said. “Everyone wears their hats, make it an event, so to not be able to walk up to the counter and have help to place a bet.”<\/p>\n
The dispute over payments began last fall, and Hawthorne Park and it’s partners have been unable to take bets and show the direct video feed of Churchill Downs races. They can still show video from other sources and take bets on races that don’t involve Churchill Downs.<\/p>\n
“We may lose 10%, but most people are so used to doing everything on their phone these days to put a bet in is not the end of the world,” said Sergio Lazzara with Crazy Pour.<\/p>\n
Hawthorne Park’s owners said they remain optimistic about the future of horse racing in Illinois, and they do expect to resolve their differences with Churchill Downs soon, just not in time for the Kentucky Derby.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2025 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VILLA PARK, Ill. (WLS) — Horse bettors won’t be lined up at the Hawthorne Race Course in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[35019,1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-69933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-35019","9":"tag-racing","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114441404053130274","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}