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SportsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:03 - Let's start off with obviously a story
00:05 that hits very home to you,
00:07 which is the fact that horse racing machines
00:10 could end up being extinct pretty soon.
00:13 I mean, if you can't have these things in Churchill Downs,
00:15 you probably can't have them anywhere, can you?
00:18 - Yeah, thanks for having me on again, Craig.
00:21 Yeah, so these historical horse racing machines
00:23 were recently ruled unconstitutional in Louisiana.
00:29 A couple of states where these are legal.
00:33 This was a little bit of an interesting story
00:35 last week out of Louisiana,
00:37 where the judge, like I said,
00:38 ruled that these machines are unconstitutional.
00:41 And the reason was, well, I guess first,
00:44 what are these HHR machines?
00:46 They're essentially slot machines
00:49 that use past horse races to kind of wager with.
00:56 To the unsuspecting eye, basically a slot machine,
01:00 but they fall in a lot of states under paramutual law,
01:03 which means that they're taxed
01:05 and regulated a bit differently
01:07 than your typical slot machine.
01:10 So in Louisiana, a group of voters were arguing
01:15 that they should be illegal,
01:18 saying that they're not covered
01:21 under the state's constitution,
01:24 considering these HHR machines as a new form of gambling,
01:28 which would have required all of the parishes or counties,
01:32 if you will, in Louisiana to hold a local vote
01:36 whether or not to authorize these machines,
01:39 much like they did with sports betting a couple of years ago.
01:44 With sports betting, each parish had to vote to legalize it.
01:48 And as we know, sports betting is legal in Louisiana,
01:52 in the vast majority of parishes,
01:55 but there are a few where you can't legally wager on sports.
02:00 So a group of voters got together
02:04 and kind of petitioned a judge who agreed
02:07 that these machines are unconstitutional.
02:11 Now, where might this go from here?
02:14 Still remains to be seen.
02:16 I called around to a couple of the off-track betting parlors
02:22 where these HHR machines are active in Louisiana.
02:26 Several of those are owned
02:28 by Churchill Downs Incorporated, CDI.
02:31 And the staff there told me that they were still in use,
02:34 even though the ruling said
02:37 that they needed to be turned off immediately.
02:39 I imagine some appeals will be coming sooner
02:43 rather than later.
02:45 So still remains to be seen what the next steps here are.
02:48 But just to kind of put a bow on this,
02:51 just specific to Louisiana,
02:53 like you said, in Kentucky,
02:55 the HHR machines are a huge business.
02:58 They help fund the overall horse racing ecosystem there
03:03 and quite popular with the public,
03:07 quite popular with lawmakers.
03:10 So if I had to venture a guess,
03:13 I doubt we see any movement elsewhere
03:17 outside of Louisiana on this topic,
03:21 but we'll see how this goes in Louisiana
03:25 with those HHR machines being ruled unconstitutional
03:28 a couple of weeks ago,
03:30 but we'll see where it goes from there.
03:32 (upbeat music)
03:35 (upbeat music)