Hon. Fraser: Pari-mutuel betting is needed in the VI!
Hon. Fraser, a stalwart fan of the sport, made this statement on June 2, 2012 at Ellis Thomas Downs Racetrack as he pinpointed certain areas that could be developed in the future for horseracing.
“We need pari-mutuel betting...the same people who are telling you that they are a Christian community and they are not indulging in betting are the same people you are going to find around Scotia Bank buying tickets, or they would go off to Antigua or wherever it is to bet. So what’s wrong with it being here?” he asked.
However, the District Representative is aware of the resistance advocates will face, and admitted that “it is going to take a lot of guts”.
“We are going to need people with courage to move it forward but most importantly we need the Government because it is going to require legislation. I am here to support this Horse Owners’ Association to move these initiatives forward and I am sure you the people who support horseracing would agree that it enhances the sport. It would make it much more attractive for those who come to us to be a part of this sport,” he added.
Furthermore, Hon. Fraser stated that the track should have simulcasting, whereby fans can watch races, mostly live, sometimes delayed, from tracks from all over the world.
Meanwhile, the current President of the VI Horse Owners’ Association Lesmore Smith, had told this news agency in a previous interview that his administration would be seeking to get support for pari-mutuel wagering and simulcasting to be legalised at horse races in the VI.
“It is one of the things that we are now going forward on the trail with. I think that we are going to need people like yourself, the media, to help us to facilitate the dos and the don’ts, the will and wouldn’t, the profits that it can bring to us as a community and also the revenues that it can put into the Government structure. Those revenues can be used for health or social services and all those areas that we are so lacking on especially the insurance because many people can’t afford it and if we can have a better health care system where the load is not on the Government itself but the country is being able to generate other revenues to assist and we can take revenues from that area and put into another to help the less fortunate ones I think that would help. So we look forward for the pari-mutuel/simulcasting. It’s one of the things we are presently discussing and its up in the air for a whole lot of discussion.”
Pari-mutuel betting/wagering is a betting system in which all bets of a particular type are placed together in a pool; taxes and the “house-take” or “vig” are removed, and payoff odds are calculated by sharing the pool among all winning bets. It is a system used in gambling on horse racing, greyhound racing, jai alai, and all sporting events of relatively short duration in which participants finish in a ranked order.
The betting system is practised in the United States Virgin Islands.
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