Account Wagering and Signal Rights, As Seen by Account Wagering Operators and Signal Providers
Friday, March 5, 2004
8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.

Mr. Chris Scherf: Good Morning, everyone. I am very pleased to see so many early risers on the second day of the convention. That doesn’t always happen, but I think we had some interesting topics yesterday and think we are going to have more fun today. I think everyone is going to really take a lot away from an excellent group of panels the Stan mainly has scheduled for this morning.

The first panel this morning is Account Wagering and Signal Rights as Seen by Account Wagering Operators and Signal Providers. Your moderator is Chris McErlean, President of Harness Tracks of America from the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority. 

Mr. Chris McErlean:  Thank you Chris.  In the beginning racing was very simple. The racetracks had full and complete control of their signals and all the distribution channels. Business was very easy to manage, as there was only one distribution channel doing track business. In the 1970’s, New York City OTB opened up the new worlds of both off-track betting and interstate simulcasting. Their taping of the Kentucky Derby without paying any fees to the host track was the genesis of the Interstate Horseracing Act.

Then simulcasting increased in every jurisdiction, account wagering followed, and now there are many more opportunities for racetracks and signal providers in the universe. And where there is opportunity, there became more issues and obviously a much more convoluted and confused world of horseracing.

Today’s guests represent both sides of the equation when it comes to those opportunities and issues. I want to introduce the panelists. I think you are going to find some very interesting opinions and points of view. First we have Bill Nader, senior vice president, New York Racing Association; next to him, Mike Veitch, the chief marketing officer Youbet.com; David Carico, who was fully employed by TVG up until last year, and is now a consultant with TVG; Mike Weiss, from both Beulah Park and Ameritab; and Michael Fenwick, from US Off Track.  I want to welcome our panelists.

Bill, I will begin with you, because you probably represent one of the highest profile signal rights holders in the whole pari-mutuel universe, New York Racing Association. From your perch at NYRA, how do you view the issue of signal rights? What is NYRA’s philosophy on signal rights, and how do you look at it in terms of distribution? 

Mr. Bill Nader:  Well, we want to grow our business like everybody else does, but we want to protect our rights, our signal rights, which we take very seriously and not just for NYRA, but also for our horsemen as they share equally in all simulcast revenue from interstate and international markets.

We had a situation that got some publicity a month or two months ago, with BetFair, a betting exchange up in the UK. We shut off our signal to TRNi and also attheraces because that was the way BetFair was able to get the audio-video to our races on the attheraces Website. Their wagering activity on our races declined dramatically once we did that. 

We do take it seriously and we want to be in compliance with federal and state law, but we also want to grow our business. With account wagering, the one thing that does represent, it’s a growing part of pari-mutuel handle and it also provides a great convenience to the customer. We have all recognized in the last decade that sports have evolved into a take-it-to-the-customer mindset. We want to make it as convenient as possible for everybody to participate in the pari-mutuel process. That is where account wagering will be a growing part of our business in the future. 

Mr. McErlean: Mike Weiss, the race industry is not known for simplicity. In your case, your situation isn’t necessarily black or white, it’s gray matter. You represent not only the racetrack Beulah Park, Ohio, you also represent Ameritab, which has a family of account wagering operations and is one of the larger account wagering operations in North America. I’m going to ask you to wear both hats on this question. What is your view of the world from the account wagering and signal rights point of view from both the racetrack operator’s point of view and the account wagering providers point of view? 

Mr. Mike Weiss: Well it is easy to wear both hats, considering being at Beulah Park I firmly believe in distribution. I know whether it’s a small track or a large racetrack that is just getting our signal, we are already putting the show on. We are already having the races day to day, and to get our signal out there into more markets, that is the key to survival. Just driving our export up because it is there.

I also believe that I have to protect my market as a racetrack. I do need some sense of security from the account wagering companies that I am protecting myself.

When I put the Amertab hat on, first I felt that we were lucky or smart enough to get into the business at the right time to take a small track and get this large in the account wagering company. When I put the Amertab hat on, I’m still looking at the track side of it. I have a contract with every track that we do business with and in there we have built in source market fees so that we protect the race track and make sure we are paying the track and the horsemen their fair share. 

Mr. McErlean:  In terms of account wagering, you are not necessarily the largest exporter/importer of races. Can you see the recent decisions by some of the larger racetracks in terms of restricting their signals?  How do you see that playing out? 

Mr. Weiss:  We are talking about account wagering now? How did it come out or how do I see it coming out? Actually, from a racetrack standpoint again, I’m looking at distribution. From an account wagering standpoint, I think exclusivity is not the way to go. I absolutely do not believe in that. I feel as a patron, if I am sitting there and I’m comfortable with the system, know how to navigate my way around that system, want to use that system, and if I’m given all the bells and whistles and everything I need, I should be able to use that system.  It is my choice if I want to move somewhere else.

The fact that I lost a couple of the prime signals, sure, as Amertab I was nervous. I didn’t want to lose it. We all know we are talking about Gulfstream, Santa Anita, and Laurel. I absolutely did not want to give those signals up, and there were a lot of fans that were not happy that we didn’t have them.

How it affected us was different. People who were comfortable with our system stayed with our system and they just looked other directions to wager. In January we were up, Amertab was up over 44 percent without the prime signals.  In February we were close to thirty percent up over last year’s numbers. 

Mr. McErlean: Now sitting right next to you, on your right, is the person who represents the company that invented or added the ‘e’ word to the vernacular of racing exclusivity, David Carraco with TVG. Their initial business plan was to sign up high profile tracks under exclusive arrangements back in 1999 when TVG launched.  From the inception then to today, has that philosophy changed at all or evolved in terms of how you view the rights of the tracks and your distribution? 

Mr. David Carico:  I do know something about the subject. Unfortunately, Chris, I was for many years with Churchill Downs, and towards the latter part of my life we negotiated with a small start up called ODS, which ultimately turned into TVG.  A lot has evolved, and a lot of controversy has evolved about the business model.  It is perceived by some the way it was intended, the way we think it is, and that is a test of fairness in promulgating live racing and is straightforward.

In other quarters it is not so straightforward and not so universally accepted. To understand the rationale, you have to go back to the days when the covenants were negotiated between TVG and those respective tracks. To understand what the vision was, it was a mutual vision then, and for the most part, it is today. We believe that in order to truly, as an industry, realize success in account wagering, this new thing that had entered our vocabulary needed to be a system that was supported by coordinated video presentations, and those video presentations had to have mainstream exposure in the major markets. That was a prospect easier said than done. We didn’t feel there was another way of approaching this new platform of distribution, but that was our vision. It is the vision we discussed with the tracks, and ultimately came up with what we know as the TVG business model.

A lot has been written and said about it. We think what distinguishes TVG, then and now, is the fact we promised to deliver mainstream distribution of the video signal. We felt like this was the predicate of generating new business, not just cannibalizing the existing business that would have gone to another platform, but also realizing new business.

We still believe that to be the case. Have all the objectives been met to the extent that TVG wanted them to? Well, no. There have been some mitigating factors along the way, but we still think that TVG holds promise of delivering on the original promise. If you look at the distribution level now versus when the channel was launched back in mid-1999, it is fair to say racing now enjoys coverage on a daily basis to the extent that they never have before. The inter-company relations that TVG enjoyed with Newscor, Fox, Comcast and some recent things that have happened, leads me to conclude there is still very much promise in the original business plan.   

Mr. McErlean: Bill, NYRA was one of the original sign-ons to TVG. Have NYRA’s views or philosophy on TVG evolved as it is going on as well? 

Mr. Nader: Well, when you look back at it from our standpoint, we represent 20 percent of the national handle--about 3 billion dollars a year, so we are a big part of the TVG platform. In a perfect world, it would be nice if TVG would come to NYRA and say we are going to purchase your rights, but that wasn’t the case because they had some start-ups in Boston and it’s expensive to the kind of production they do day in and day out. 

Initially when we signed on, TVG did a good job selling exclusivity. If you look at it back then, it was not an easy sell to go to a track and use that term. That term doesn’t play well in our world, but they did a good job. Not just with NYRA, but with many tracks in gaming exclusive rights to help offset their costs to be able to do what they wanted to do.

Nobody likes exclusivity. We didn’t like it then, we don’t like it now, but we recognized it was a trade off. Now, as we move forward we will continue to monitor that and make decisions. I will be one voice among many at NYRA as we try to figure out what our future plans might be. 

Mr. McErlean: Account wagering has grown up from the simple telephone betting to the Internet. Probably one of the largest companies, if not the largest company, now operating on the Internet is Youbet.com. Mike, how does a company like Youbet.com, which is not a racetrack operator, doesn’t own any product, and is essentially dependent on all the signals operate? What is your story or game plan in terms of bringing value to the customer, the end user, in this case the racetrack, from distribution? 

Mr. Mike Veitch: I think it is a fair question. In some cases it might be conceived as a disadvantage not to have a physical plan or not to have a track to leverage, to share in the community in the same way most of the people in the room do, but in another way it allows us clarity of thinking. We are absolutely and positively focused on one thing, and that is bringing customers to the various different wagering pools.

Unlike some companies that have been there from the beginning of the ADW business, I’m less than two years into the horse racing business. I came out of newspaper publishing, as have a number of other people in our company. You won’t find a better background than publishing to bring to an enterprise a respect for the rights of content, whether it’s copyright or intellectual property or whatever.

There isn’t any question in our mind that images belong to the horsemen and they belong to the tracks. The value of those images can be determined in the market place by the people who are carrying them or they can be determined in advance by long term contracts like TVG’s contract. While today there are certainly things that anybody would have tweaked had they known five years ago what we all know today, TVG’s concept was visionary.

We are a beneficiary to a degree of the TVG concept because we are a subcontractor of the content, but we also have significant relationships with a lot of tracks. I don’t think there are too many tracks in the U.S., other than one or two that Mike Weiss mentioned a few minutes ago, that we are not doing business with. To us, the focus is on delivering the best consumer experience possible, whether it is in the funding process, or the way we stream video, or the wagering, or access to PPs. We are absolutely, positively focused on that, on the technology that comes with it. That is certainly one of the reasons why we have grown from the smallest to the largest in handle. 

Mr. McErlean: Michael Fenwick, the US Off Track is not one of the largest companies from the account wagering point of view. In fact, it started out just exclusively doing greyhounds and has evolved into its current format. What is the view from your company in terms of how you continue to compete in the market place, again not having leverages either as a signal rights holder from a horse racing point of view, and also from being on the smaller fish size from an account wagering point of view? 

Mr. Michael Fenwick: I guess we take their signals if they give it to us. We aren’t going to worry about it. We think the exclusivity thing is a little wrong headed. It is kind of like Wal-Mart had just closed the front doors and told a few people you can go in the back door. That’s how you want to bet. We want to provide the best product we can to whoever we can and with the most number of options. Right now, like you said, we do greyhounds. We only offer the harness and thoroughbred to the customers who want to wager on the big races. Ninety percent of our business actually is greyhound stuff. 

Mr. Weiss:  I just want to comment on the exclusivity. TVG’s original concept was coming up and I understand why they did approach the large tracks. They were building a television show at the time that was way ahead of its time. It really helped the industry get together and grow in a sense. You can almost see the concept. It is like one of the big networks, they are not going to turn around and loan Ray Romano to the other station. They were building their television network, they had a lot of money invested, and I can completely understand that.

Now, our company is run by racetracks. Ameritab is not just Beulah Park. We have ten sites out there right now, and mostly racetracks or horse owners or breeders that have their sites with us. What is happening is some people or some of the other companies need to realize that they are racetracks also. We are in the distribution business. It’s the same thing as sitting at the racetrack and you have your import and export, and you are crossing over. The original concept absolutely makes sense and I understand where it was coming from, but you have to realize where we are going. 

Mr. McErlean: Someone already touched on it, but let’s play devil’s advocate for the moment. From a racetrack operators point of view, they are the signal rights holder, they own the rights, it’s their product, why shouldn’t they pick and choose who they want to send it to and who should distribute it for them. Again, they have made the investment in the product, their facilities, and their infrastructure. Why not? They are the rights holder. It is not a free world in that respect. That obviously differs from the view that the account wagering providers have that everyone should have free access. How do you balance that? What would be your response to that, Mike Vietch from Youbet? 

Mr. Vietch: Well, like Mike Weiss, we are the two people who are sitting on this stage that had an experience last year with carrying everybody’s signal, and our customers had the experience last year of having availability to everyone’s signal.  Going into the beginning of this year there are variations on it, but obviously we are missing Magna content at the decision of Magna.

The beauty of our business, the interactive business, is we know exactly who is doing business with us, and how, where, and why. The reality is the statistics prove that it was their right to do it as the owner of the signal. Now, whether it was their right to do it, as the representative of horsemen as the licensees within states, and all of those other things, is being openly questioned right now in the state of California where the industry has suffered because of that decision and a few other decisions perhaps. To our prospective, like our counterpart over here, our business is better because we are not carrying them. Our handle is up and the revenue we make on that handle, not just the percentages, but in absolute dollars, is up because the customer makes the decisions in the Internet world, really in the world, but I will just keep it to the Internet world. The customer expressed a preference for the channel or the Internet site over the content whether it was Gulfstream or Santa Anita. I would not have bet that necessarily in the beginning of this year. This isn’t a concept that we would have signed up for voluntarily perhaps, but we have learned an awful lot from it and perhaps some other people have too.  

Mr. McErlean: Anyone else in terms of seeing it from the other side of the fence or the racetrack’s point of view in terms of their rights?  David? 

Mr. Carico: There is an inclination, a reflex of defending the exclusive provisions built into those contracts. I go back to the predicate that we believe in order to really be successful in this thing, long term, there has to be a branded, coordinated video signal that is shown throughout this country and it has to be supported by communication plans that are paid advertising publicity.

All those things make up the marketing plan and that is not easily afforded. It has to be paid for, and in this business we have not shown a tremendous amount of growth over the past several years. You have two options. You can be paid for such a service and go out and garner the carriage, the deals with the cable, and produce a signal, a quality signal that mainstream people want to see, at least they think we want to see. You can do it on a fee for service basis, but I don’t think the industry is really positioned to be able to do that. So the alternative is to pay as you go from the incremental effects of generating new revenue, and that is the path we have chosen.

In order to do that there is a ramp-up period. There is a time you have to allow the business to mature in order to recover the investment and begin to make a buck. That is kind of where we find ourselves today.

I don’t think TVG, to be honest with you, should defend their exclusive provisions. I think somebody can take issue and say no, I don’t think account wagering should be promoting. It can be promoted at the track level as an extension of the local markets and that is how it should be. I am not disputing there is sentiment out there that says that. There is. That is the reason why you have a market place. It just so happens we believe in order to move the need to long term, it is going to require more because we are going to find ourselves displacing more dollars than we are able to create in the long term. 

Mr. Veitch: The one thing I would add, Chris, is the misconception out there, and I don’t know where it started, but between the two of us there is probably $200 million sunk in technology, marketing and whatever. So to do this job properly, to satisfy the customer properly, that it is not a couple of guys sitting in a room with a computer as I have heard this industry characterized as not too long ago. It is a highly sophisticated business. There is a significant amount of advertising and marketing expenses laid against it, and it does bring new business to the table. In order to retain and provide the right kind of customer experience, there is constant investment that needs to be placed in it. It is not a high margin business. We have had our first quarters of profitability just in the last year, in a company that is eight years old. Where I come from, that is patient capital. In the publishing business it is two and a half, three years and you are out. There are investments that need to be recouped. 

Mr. McErlean: Not only are signal rights an issue for racetracks, territorial rights are an issue as well. I know the term ‘source market fee’ has come up. Some states, such as California and New Jersey, have essentially built walls around their states in terms of access for account wagering providers to come in. How do you see that trend? Do you see more of that? Do you see more issues with account wagering providers coming into local markets and essentially being called poachers for local customers?  How do you see that evolving in terms of where that trend is going? 

Mr. Weiss: This actually goes back to your last statement about, and putting a Beulah Park hat on, sending my signal out. I do believe that I have to have a contract with all these companies. It is my choice who I want to send to, that is true. Of course I want to send to anybody who is a legitimate business out there because that is just my business philosophy. Others are different.

In terms, yes, I believe there should be a source market fee, some protection in my market, which we, both the racetrack and the horsemen, should benefit from.  On the other side, I do see things changing state to state. This is still a relatively new business so we always have to keep up with what is happening with the laws in every territory as we expand from Ameritab’s side and dealing with each track. 

And back to Beulah, I want to have a contract with everybody. We are protecting ourselves in that way. I believe by getting out there and sending to everybody, we are open 360 something days a year, seven days a week. How many people are at my track seven days a week? We are going into a convenience mode, we are actually taking it to our customers to make it easier for them and for them to be able to have the choice of what provider they want to use, what signals they want to wager on. That is just something that we need to be just a little bit better than the guy next to me and hope that they are going to use our account wagering system. 

Mr. McErlean: Bill, from the racetrack point of view, New York is such a great market. Just about every account wagering provider is in there providing service, even though you may be tied to one company. How do you reconcile that? How do you see that playing out in your market place? Is it something you would like more control over, who comes into your market place? 

Mr. Nader: Having control is very important because it can get away from you quickly and when it does it is hard to turn off that faucet. Account wagering in New York goes way back to the very early seventies. We have a long history in New York. Actually before TVG our signal was available to over 3 million homes in Nassau, Suffolk County, up in the capital regions, as well as New York City.  Each regional OTB had its own phone account wagering system. We had ours with NYRA. One, the rules might have been a little bit different. We had a higher minimum balance. New York City had a zero minimum balance, so they had a much bigger audience than we did or many more accounts than we did.  It has been a part of our landscape for a long, long time. In terms of territorial protection, yes, it is at times very difficult, as you know, to really be aware of everything that is going on in the market place. It seems at times it can absolutely drive you crazy trying to figure out who is trying to do what to whom. Fortunately we have enough intelligence out there that gets back to us and we do our best to protect it through contractual agreements and things like that. But it is process that each and every year gets a little more difficult to police. 

Mr. McErlean: There was a representative from XpressBet who was scheduled to be on the panel, Ron Luniewski, who was unable to make it. I don’t know, is anyone is here from Magna who would want to talk on their recent actions with signal rights which plays right into this topic?  We will have questions if anybody has any for our panelists, if you would like to ask them.

Again I would just throw back out there in terms of the recent actions by Magna, do you see that as an ongoing trend? Are there going to be more of these signal operators pulling signals from specific companies? 

Mr. Carico: It is interesting that TVG really doesn’t much care about what happens in states. They are not naïve, and they don’t expect to be accorded a franchise on an exclusive basis to operate within the borders of the state. Having said that, we really don’t care what happens. I know that sounds crazy, but that sentiment is built out of the business model. We are already giving up say five or six points, everything that is made from the wagering dollar, back to the industry either in the form of a host fee or a source market fee. We have been called downright crazy for doing it, but that is how we do it. In a test of fairness, whether it be a set of regulators or even track participants, the industry participants in the state, we feel pretty comfortable that when they look at the business deal, we don’t think that there is going to be too many better ones out there, quite frankly. I know it sounds cavalier, but really that is how TVG looks at life.

I will say this, and this is an editorial comment, one of the things that was exchanged in the negotiation sessions between TVG and their track partners, was a cooperative effort to get open some of the states that were expressly closed and clear up some of the states that were more gray than black and white. Unfortunately, as a collective effort we have not achieved nearly as much as we should. There are a lot of factors that contributed to that, not the least which is a preoccupation with another form of legislation allowing for another activity that has more zeroes attached to the forecast and we understand that, but what I am afraid has happened is that account wagering has been somewhat relegated. There are some instances where political capital doesn’t want to be expended at the sake of losing footing on this other thing. This understandably is very important, but it is unfortunate that from an account wagering standpoint a few key states remain closed.  

Mr. Nader: I’ll put some numbers on that. There are seventeen states now that are authorized for account wagering. Those seventeen states represent ten billion of our fifteen billion in national handle. Of that ten billion, 10 percent or one billion is through account wagering. So that gives you a little perspective of where we are, that was in 2002, and that is sort of where we are now. I think what David is trying to say is that as we move forward it means a bigger piece of the pie. 

Mr. Veitch: I would only add this, Chris, I think your question was, do we in the ADW business believe that there will be other situations like the Magna situation where the signal is going to be withdrawn?  I hope not, but one of the beautiful things about this business is that we are probably the most heavily regulated business, other than maybe medicine, in the country. All of us owe a debt of gratitude to Magna because they have done the experiment. The economics of that experiment are out there for all of us to see. Their stockholders will want to know whether it was a good idea or not. The stakeholders in the various different states, whether they are horsemen or regulators that were depending on those taxes, want to know whether it is a good idea or not. In California, sometime next month, they are going to ask them very specifically to present whether this was a good idea for them or not.

From the customer’s point of view, everybody wants to have everything when they want it.  In USA Today this morning, there are twenty-one thousand ways you can order a Starbuck’s coffee. I don’t know how many other people had the time to read that story this morning, but Americans want it, how they want it, when they want it and they want choices on all of it. From the consumer’s point of view that is ideal. From a businessman’s point of view you have value in your signal and you need to negotiate that value and make sure that you get the most for it. It may very well be through exclusivity or it may very well be through distributing it everywhere. There is no doubt that they have the legal right to do what they do, or any track operator has the legal right to do what they want to do with their signal, but the economics have proven over a relatively short period of time that more is better than less. 

Mr. McErlean: I want to ask you to look into your crystal balls in the not too far future, as we know in this business even one year, or two years can be an eternity, but five years from now, account wagering and signal rights, where do you see them, Bill, going? 

Mr. Nader: Well, I think the Internet is probably where we need to really see growth and explosion. I think it was last year that the US Justice Department was still a gray area with regard to domestic Internet wagering. I can go online and I can buy stocks on my fidelity account in a matter of seconds, but I think we need to eliminate that gray area and open up especially with regard to the seventeen account wagering states, that Internet based wagering is a legal activity. That will be in the next five years, the best potential for growth. We talk about the convenience of wagering and the ability to wager by telephone, and I think the Internet is the same platform as the telephone in my world. Hopefully that message is communicated to the Justice Department, and I would think in the next five years that is what I would like to see. 

Mr. McErlean:  Mike Fenwick? 

Mr. Fenwick: We see a lot of growth coming in the next five years, particularly on the wireless side. I don’t think it has taken off as much as we had hoped initially, but we think in the next few years the wireless side is where there is going to be a lot of growth.

Mr. McErlean: Mike where do you see it going? 

Mr. Weiss: I think we are just starting. I really think there is a tremendous amount of growth. It is going to help. I know a lot of people are scared that account wagering is taking some people or business away from your tracks. I think you are actually bringing the sport to their homes. Again with the wireless it will be on PDA’s, eventually. You are bringing it back out to them. I know my patrons. I know who will be there every Friday in this chair. He is only there on Friday’s, but as he is leaving he is putting money into his account because he is playing during the week now instead of just on that Friday or when he is out, or on his way to a wedding with his wife, or whatever he is doing. You are bringing the sport back. They are following horses through their stable alerts and seeing that a horse is running at a different track and they are able to go make a wager on it. I just see it booming. In the next couple of years we will see more of international racing. We may be twenty-four hours at one point, with the time zones I don’t know. But you are going to see something there all the time. I think it will be tremendous growth. 

Mr. McErlean:  David from your landscape? 

Mr. Carico: Access fees from Mike’s company, TVG, and XpressBet in California have fused in thirty million dollars into operating and purse accounts. TVG, with throwing in that which goes with host fees, we have returned fifty million dollars in California. There is a lot growth out there. Hopefully we can realize it in the short term rather than having to stand in line later on. I am encouraged, since it is a platform that hasn’t begun to achieve the objective that it can over the long haul. 

Mr. Mc Erlean: Mike? 

Mr. Veitch: The evolution of the business over the last couple of years gives us the indication of the amount of change we have confronting us. I think we are moving into the era of more plus business. The focus with most of our track partners, the conversations we have today, it isn’t about cannibalism. It is about how can I get more, how can I get a larger share of your customer, ‘your’ meaning the Youbet customer’s wallet. What kind of co-promotion can we do that brings customers to the track, and at the same time maybe even moves customers around the country so they can have VIP experiences at various different partner tracks. 

What we have found in our business is everyone here has a different way of going to market and that is good. We are kind of niched at the top quintile of the on-shore, not the off shore, but the on-shore wagerer. We satisfy their technology needs and their information needs. As I talk to our best customers, half the time they are on the track, on our system, or on one of your tracks, and half the time they are day trading. They are like day traders at ADD. They want to know whether they were right, in a minute and two seconds. They don’t want to have to wait all day for the answer. There are more and more of that sort of odds arbitraging opportunities out there, they look across all of the different tracks that are available to them. That’s growth. It brings fun back to a group of people that I don’t know necessarily would experience the same thing in a crowd at an OTB, but diffidently would experience it when they are at the track.  

Mr. McErlean: Again, a lot of our audience are rights holders out there themselves and some of them are involved in account wagering as well. Any questions for the panelists in terms of what they have discussed today? I do want to give Magna, if they feel there is anything else to be said on the issue of their recent actions, the program indicated Ron Luniewski of XpressBet was supposed to be here but unfortunately couldn’t make it. I think everybody would be interested as to what their view is, certainly as to what is happening with the account wagering, if they would want to speak on it or not.

Mike Weiss, just one point, with Beulah Park, do you practice what you preach in terms of openness? Are any of the companies, XpressBet, Youbet, TVG, are they able to come into your market place and compete directly with you? 

Mr. Weiss: I send Beulah to everyone except at this moment XpressBet. They are not sending to us and it is more of an Ohio issue. Beulah and Thistle and 7-7, because you know, if you are familiar with the 7-7, we have always worked together, with them putting limitations on their signal it would be limiting me from sending to Youbet or TVG. I would be selling half of a signal, which would be very tough. At this point I am not working with them, but with everybody else I am.  And if I could say to anybody out there if you are a racetrack and you are not in the account wagering business, I think you should be. You need to look at it. 

Mr. McErlean: In terms of those companies taking wagers from your customers, your residents? 

Mr. Weiss:  I have my contract with them and from Beulah’s standpoint I am satisfied with the proper source market fees. I have made a better deal to protect my horsemen and give them a larger share of the source market fee this year to go toward purses. 

Mr. McErlean: I want to thank today’s panelists, and again, if there are any last questions or any points that want to be brought up from the audience, last chance for it. Thanks, Bill Nader, Mike Veitch, Dave Carico, Mike Weiss, and Mike Fenwick for being part of the panel today.  Thank you.