Wichita and Tampa Greyhound Parks to End Live Racing

Two greyhound tracks will be closing shortly here in the United States, one because it will not be allowed to install slot machines and the other because it wants to in order to concentrate on its poker rooms. Wichita Greyhound Park in Kansas had hung its hopes of staying open and prospering on a county-wide referendum on slots, but the vote went narrowly against them and they have announced their intention to close. Tampa Greyhound Park in Florida has ended live racing of its own volition, purportedly out of the blue to concentrate on their poker rooms.

Wichita owner Phil Ruffin has said he has been losing big bucks ever since he purchased the facility back in 1997 for a reported ten million dollars, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars a month lately. All of the hopes for keeping Wichita open hinged on the outcome of an August 7th vote to allow slots in the facility. The state of Kansas had already approved slots, which will be going into The Woodlands in Kansas City, Kansas, but the addition of the machines was contingent on county approval. Sedgwick County voters apparently felt that Wichita Greyhound Park should not get slot machines, but only by a margin of 343 votes out of more than one hundred thousand. Ruffin now will end live racing in early October and close the doors for good in November, with the track's two-hundred and fifty employees losing their jobs. Ironically, the "no" vote winning means that nearby Sumner County will now be allowed to pursue a casino of its own, while Wichita Greyhound Park goes down the tubes.

The advent of casinos across the nation has caused several dog tracks to go belly up in the past few years. Plainfield Greyhound Park and Shoreline Star, a pair of Connecticut dog tracks, have stopped live racing in the past two years as the Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Casinos ran them out of business. Plainfield now stands as a pile of rubble while Shoreline Star in Bridgeport only simulcasts other horse and dog signals into its building for patrons to wager on. Hinsdale in New Hampshire has been hanging on for years by its fingernails, but has now finally succumbed to poor handles as gamblers opt to travel down to the Nutmeg State to spend their dollars. Hinsdale will cease live racing after Labor Day and despite its claims, they are unlikely to ever run another greyhound race again.

Tampa Greyhound Park had reopened on July 1st, supposedly to run year round. This idea made little sense, but kennels came and spent thousands of dollars shipping dogs and handlers into the newly renovated kennel compound. However, Derby Lane in St. Pete, right across the bridge from Tampa, has also been running year round, and Tampa had no chance to compete against them. However, a new law allows pari-mutuel facilities in Florida to offer poker as long as the track runs a minimum number of live racing days. Tampa is about to reach that number, and like a bolt of lightning to the kennels and dog owners, has announced that they will cease live racing on August 18th and put all their efforts into the poker aspect of their business. Many of the dog and kennel owners feel that Tampa Greyhound Park used them as pawns to achieve the live racing requirement and has now cast them aside like wilted flowers, and from the looks of the entire mess it would indeed be hard to argue the point.

Unlike Wichita, where the track owner worked with his employees to try to keep things afloat, Tampa has basically cut loose its kennels after running live for seventy-five years. The contracts the kennels signed at the beginning of the meet are as worthless as toilet paper it seems, but the kennels are looking into some sort of legal remedy to offset their tremendous losses incurred while filling their buildings with greyhounds to run so Tampa could put on a show. Tampa track officials are predictably taking the low road, cowardly declining to comment to the local newspapers or be interviewed by television and radio stations. All they have done is issue a statement from General Manager Jim Hater saying "Since opening our card room on July 1, it has become clear that poker is where we need to focus our efforts. Low attendance for greyhound racing and the popularity and growth of poker made this an obvious business decision due to recent legislative changes." Unless Tampa officials are complete morons, they had to know what the handles would be, but the lure of full-time card rooms allowed by the new legislation was too tempting. Once the kennels had made possible the live racing dates quota to be met, they were unceremoniously thrown under the bus.