On Wednesday, Aug. 16, officials with Woodbine Entertainment indicated that pari-mutuel wagering on horse racing will soon be available through sports betting provider bet365, likely in advance of the 2023 King's Plate on Sunday, Aug. 21.

The announcement was first made by Jim Lawson, Woodbine's current and outgoing CEO, during the King's Plate draw and media conference at Woodbine Racetrack on Wednesday morning.

“The good news is Woodbine is effectively a non-profit corporation, we put all of our revenue back into horse racing so this is a great thing for the industry in terms of potential revenue,” said Lawson as reported by Dan Ralph of the Canadian Press. “More than that, you could see the sports-betting world just growing and growing.

“It’s currently $4 billion in Ontario, it’s expected to grow as high as $10 billion. This is our business, we cannot be left out of that growth sector.”

After Lawson's announcement, Woodbine issued a notice to the horse racing industry regarding the groundbreaking development.  The announcement from Woodbine appears below.

Horse Racing to be Available to Ontario Sports Bettors in Advance of The King’s Plate

Woodbine and Woodbine Mohawk Park Horse Racing Community,

We have some very exciting news to share.

In the coming days, horse racing will be available to Ontario sports bettors through bet365’s Ontario platform. We anticipate this will be fully live on bet365’s platform in Ontario in advance of The King’s Plate on Sunday.

This is an integral step in making wagering on horse racing – and the revenue associated with it – more accessible than ever before. Over the coming months, we will be working with other licensed sports books in Ontario who are also very interested in offering horse racing to their customers.
 
To be clear, how this works is that bet365 (and eventually other sports book operators) has integrated Woodbine’s pari-mutuel horse racing product into its platform. bet365 customers will be provided the opportunity to bet on all the same racing products that are offered through HPIbet. It remains illegal in Canada to offer fixed-odds betting on horse racing.

How Did We Get Here?

If you recall, when the Federal Government was contemplating legalizing fixed odds sports betting a couple of years ago, Woodbine, in partnership with the HBPA, COSA, Jockey Club of Canada, Racetracks of Canada, and other racing individuals like Hall of Fame jockey Sandy Hawley, lobbied the government to not allow sports book operators to be able to offer fixed odds betting on horse racing as it would have been catastrophic to the industry. They recognized the risk and carved out fixed-odds on horse racing when they amended the Criminal Code to allow for single event sports wagering. This paved the way for the opportunity to integrate pari-mutuel horse racing into fixed odds sports books, which is what Woodbine has been leading over the past 18 months. By doing it this way, we receive revenue from the handle that’s generated through bet365 and eventually other sports books.

What Does This Mean for Our Industry and Sport?

We are anticipating that once our pari-mutuel horse racing product is in the major sports book operators’ platforms and the sports betting market in the Province is fully mature, it will be become a substantial driver of Home Market Area (HMA) handle and revenue. This is our biggest opportunity to increase HMA handle, which, as you know, contributes to the Horse Improvement Program (TIP and SIP). It is our expectation that, in time, this new source of handle will boost our ongoing efforts to meaningfully increase support to the Ontario racing industry and its stakeholders. 

HPIbet

HPIbet will continue to be the very best platform for our core horse players and will remain a critically important part of our wagering ecosystem, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in handle every year. 

From a horse player perspective, HPIbet will remain the ideal platform for them as it provides a lucrative loyalty program with exclusive cash back, access to the most racing data in one place, and the opportunity to be a part an unrivaled resource network. Further, we also have our VIP program, Prestige by HPIbet, that offers many valuable benefits to our high value players.

How is HPIbet different from bet365?

• HPIbet is the only platform where horse wagers can earn rewards and benefits, like cashback and points.
• We accept cash - whether the cash is loaded to an HPIbet card or anonymously bet at our tracks, OTB, etc.
• HPIbet players have access to multi-stream video of races from here and around the world. bet365 players will only be able to watch the races they place wagers on.
• Access to video replays and to download past performances and wagering guides.
• Ability to make notes on horses and save them, features to search for horses, jockeys and trainers.

Size of Sports Betting Market

bet365, and eventually other sports book platforms, will make horse racing available to millions of sports bettors once the market is fully mature. 

Our research suggests that sports bettors may typically bet less money and less frequently on racing compared to HPIbet customers, but there are significantly more of them throughout the province.

As mentioned before, we anticipate that this will become a substantial handle driver in Ontario. This won’t happen overnight as the sports betting market is still maturing and integrating pari-mutuel horse racing into sports book operators will take time. That said, this is an unprecedented opportunity to grow our HMA handle and engage an entirely new customer segment and future fans of horse racing.

In summary, this is a major step forward for our sport and the horse racing industry. A lot of heavy lifting remains, but this first step creates a substantial amount of opportunity for growth.

We look forward to sharing more news on this front in the months ahead.

(with files from Woodbine)