Kyle Goon: It’s time for Maryland to go all in on horse racing — or get out of the business

You could argue that in racing, it’s the horses who have the most straightforward path. All they ever have to do is run in circles along the track.

It’s the people in the horse racing business who have to choose how to tackle the forks in the road, then live with the consequences of those decisions.

The state of Maryland is at such a juncture — an extremely difficult one. The options are actually brutally simple: Either go all in on the horse racing business that has already cost the state at least $500 million, or end this star-crossed venture and start putting assets like the beloved Pimlico racetrack up for sale for someone else to run.

The only truly wrong option is to maintain the present course and end up in the wilderness, bleeding taxpayer money the whole time for generations to come.

I understand the trepidation of state leaders who are tired of writing checks and tossing them into a seemingly bottomless pit.

Senate President Bill Ferguson told Maryland Matters he wanted “to understand the full game plan” of a proposed Laurel Park training facility that will cost nearly $50 million to acquire. State Treasurer Dereck Davis is another skeptic, wondering aloud whether horse racing has the public support outside of the Preakness to actually have a viable future in the state.

Here’s the problem, though: Maryland isn’t mulling whether or not to give more money to the industry. Maryland is the industry now.

We got here because of a fatal miscalculation two years ago, when the authority the state tasked with saving horse racing in Maryland was thoroughly outmaneuvered down the backstretch of negotiations with industry giant The Stronach Group.

After years of neglecting the venerated Pimlico facilities and letting the shine come off the middle jewel of the Triple Crown, Stronach cut a deal with a state that had reached desperation to save horse racing. It sold the dilapidated, money-losing track to Maryland for $1, allowing the government to enact its own aggressive renovation plans to the tune of half a billion.

Somehow, however, Stronach got to keep the one asset that has any actual earning power in Maryland horse racing: the intellectual property rights of the Preakness. For that privilege, Maryland still owes $3 million plus 2% of the betting handle to the IP’s owner annually (the Preakness remains a strong wagering draw, and last year’s total payment would have neared $6 million).

They sold Maryland all the junk in their storage unit — except the classic Camaro. As long as we continue to pay them, we get to take it for a drive once a year. What a deal.

There’s a good reason the Maryland Thoroughbred Racetrack Operating Authority no longer exists — it was inept. In addition to this bungled deal, the authority also botched the $4.5 million purchase of an upstate farm for a training facility that they later determined could not be built there.

Many folks in Annapolis still mutter under their breath that Greg Cross, who led the authority, dug the hole deeper for the state. Now, in addition to asking for money to buy the Laurel Park facility to build the training center, a new expensive opportunity is on the table: acquiring the Preakness rights — the ones Maryland should have secured in the first place.

Back in 2024, Stronach made clear to state officials that buying the Preakness IP was not on the table. Since then, I guess something has changed. Churchill Downs now stands to be the next owner of the Preakness, and will spend $85 million for the right to collect Maryland’s annual payments into perpetuity. The state has the opportunity to match the offer, but it’s far from clear that they will, essentially leaving the industry rescue operation half-done.

That means an out-of-state owner will still have its foot on the neck of Maryland racing — just wearing a Kentucky boot instead of a Canadian one.

The biggest losers right now are the taxpayers. While construction is reportedly zipping along at Pimlico, there is obviously no guarantee that the Preakness will ever be restored to its former glory. The annual celebratory weekend in May has devolved from a cultural touchstone of this region to much more of a passing niche interest in a wilting industry.

This year’s Preakness shows just how shallow the wider business’s interests are in Maryland. The field for the race itself, while competitive, is widely considered one of the weakest in modern history. The Kentucky Derby winner once again decided to skip the race this year, along with the biggest star trainers in the business.

At the Alibi Breakfast — long a colorful staple of Preakness week that saw banter between the leading figures in horse racing — many of the trainers who do have a horse in the race couldn’t be bothered to even attend. (D. Wayne Lukas, one of the race’s fiercest out-of-state defenders, died last year, leaving a massive void in this year’s festivities.)

For all intents and purposes, the Laurel Park racetrack is serving as a soundstage for NBC’s broadcast. Fewer than 5,000 people are attending (the nearby Chesapeake Baysox Double-A team drew 6,694 last Saturday). It’s hard to tell if people outside of Maryland even care where this race is run.

That could be an unsettling harbinger of the future. The nightmare that everyone in the state has to worry about is whether the owner of the Preakness — soon to be Churchill Downs — wants to move the race out of the state. While many folks in Maryland racing seem to doubt that can or will happen, and Churchill has said that Maryland will still control the fate of the Preakness, the state has yet to produce documentation showing it will have the power to protect its most important race.

One thing remains absolutely clear. Maryland cannot live in a reality where an outside interest controls the future of a state-run asset. If Churchill Downs decided to relocate the Preakness in the next decade, for example, how could Maryland justify the steep taxpayer cost of restoring Pimlico?

If Maryland is unwilling to spend the extra dough to acquire IP rights and a new training facility, there is another responsible option: punt. Sell everything the state has acquired with the assurance that the Preakness stays in Maryland, and leave horse racing to the companies who already do it.

Back in 2024, The Banner reported that Churchill Downs was sniffing around acquiring Pimlico and thought about lobbying to tank Maryland’s acquisition. Would they be interested in buying a newly renovated track now? With a contract that would keep the race in-state for the next 50 or 60 years, that starts sounding like a pretty astute move for Maryland.

It is not, however, a bloodless choice. Even if Churchill Downs can adjust the racing calendar in the Preakness’ favor and grow the event back to shades of its former glory, doing so could shorten the racing calendar — leaving fewer dates for Maryland racing professionals to make their living.

A brief look at Louisville residents’ concerns about the Derby’s ownership makes clear the race has become less of a local gem and more of a corporate flagship to be run in primetime TV windows.

Neither of these is a strictly tolerable option, but they’re the best ones Maryland has available to save an industry on never-ending life support. While Gov. Wes Moore’s administration may feel the short-term pain of pushing for even more spending on horse racing, if the state fails to acquire the Preakness IP, it will be the bane of the next five or six gubernatorial administrations — and for generations of Marylanders to come.

If they can’t pay now for the rights they should have had two years ago, it’d be best to get out of the business altogether. No less an American philosopher than Ron Swanson gave us wisdom for this moment: “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.”

Maryland needs to put its whole backing into horse racing. Or it needs to see itself all the way out.

If the state leaves us stranded in the middle, the thoroughbreds won’t be the only ones running in circles in the decades to come.