Churchill Downs Buys YouBet.com
December 8, 2009
If the recent reports are to be believed, Churchill Downs has purchased the online gambling site YouBet.com. This is a bold move for the horse racing park, and is sure to upset many within the state. Currently the Governor of Kentucky is trying to purchase the track from its owners, but as of yet has not been able to.
This move has not yet been commented on by the Governor, who has made quite a name for himself in the news when it comes to online gambling. He has been trying to seize several online gambling domain names as he says that he has to protect the state from the industry. However, how does this look that the one track he is trying to purchase now owns an online gambling site.
Beshear has been very much against online gambling, but very in support of bringing casinos to the state. Churchill Downs has been financially struggling for some years now, and experts say that this could be exactly what they need. With this deal, the track would get roughly $700 million a year from the online horse racing industry. The online gambling industry has already said that the horse racing market is worth roughly $1.4 billion so this would mean a significant amount of money for the track.
The track says that in order to survive you must adapt, and they were not doing that for these past few years. They obviously realize that online gambling is the next big move for the industry and that they need to be out ahead of it, before they are left behind.
