It's been reiterated here often that the North American pari-mutuel handle reached a peak in 2000 when the total climbed over $15 billion for the first time and remained there for six more years, through 2007. The recession then took its toll, and in 2008, the handle dropped to $14.3 billion, then two years at below $13 billion, and in 2011, wound up at $11.4 billion. The wipeout of the middle class was, of course, a major factor in the drop.         .

    Despite the unsubstantiated tales of the younger set now being more interested in other forms of entertainment, that handle has held true for five straight years. In 2015, it was just under $11.3 billion, a 1.5% increase over the year before. Today, the figures released for the first 11 months of this year show that wagering in the United States has totaled just over $10 billion, compared to $10.675 billion in all of 2015. Adding on the final month, plus the total for the year from Canada, and the $11 billion mark is safe for another year. Whether it will ever reach $12 billion or more again is anybody's guess, but it's not going in the wrong direction at the present time.

    GET YOUR MICROSCOPES READY! - Will anybody ever be surprised at the actions of Florida's Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering? If you want to inspect the figures for the state's poker rooms, here's a hint. Using a magnifying glass doesn't help that much - a microscope would probably be better suited for the task. Whereas the table used to be fairly easy to read, it's now sprawled over the computer screen in such a manner that makes it a real chore. Even with my recent successful cataract surgery.

    The main problem, at this time of year, is that they list each venue at the left of the page, with all the info from July 1 through Oct. 31, in minute lettering. To the right, are the months of November through June, with nothing next to them - because we don't have figures for those months yet! Why doesn't someone at the Division tell the graph-maker to leave off the months that are nothing but white spaces and triple the size of the months gone by? Then add a month every 30 days and in the meantime figure out a way to solve the problem later in the season? Like, make the graph two pages!

    Anybody who is in the dark about the impact that the poker room at Oxford Downs near The Villages has made on the poker room at the former Ocala Jai Alai fronton, digest these numbers. Prior to Oxford, the former fronton enjoyed gross receipts of $3.4 to $3.6 million a year. 

    For the July 1 of 2015 through June 2016 fiscal year, the fronton's take dropped to $2,974,293. That's because Oxford opened sometime in May and handled $72,788, then came back with its first full month in June and took in $274,182, or $346,970 that would have gone - all or in part - to Ocala. The fronton, in June, while Oxford was flourishing, took in just $173,832, its lowest month in a dog's age.

    In the four months of the new fiscal year, the magnifying glass reads the score of the Oxford-Ocala game as Oxford $1,101,942-Ocala $582,596. Multiplying the Ocala receipts by three, and a low of $1.74 million means the fronton will do half of its previous best seasons. It makes it easy to understand why the new venues that are cropping up are so despised by management of those in place for years.   

     

     

    

    

 

     

 

    

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