Tracks from Florida to California experienced technical issues related to the totalizator system that handles wagering on Saturday, delaying payouts, odds displays, and even prompting officials at Tampa Bay Downs in Oldsmar, Fla., to run its most important event, the Grade 3 Tampa Bay Derby, as a non-betting exhibition contest. Tampa Bay Downs was forced to cancel the final race on Saturday on what is traditionally its biggest day of the year.
The outage, which was caused by a failure at the AmTote hub in Hunt Valley, Md., occurred around 4:45 p.m. ET after Waskesiu won the G3 Tampa Bay Oaks. The track was unable to post the winning payoffs after the race was declared official.
Shortly thereafter, delays were reported at other tracks, including Santa Anita, when payoffs for the Southern California track's fourth race – off at 2:08 p.m. – were not posted for a prolonged period, delaying the remainder of the program. Other abnormalities or delays with the system were reported at Oaklawn in Arkansas, Laurel in Maryland, Gulfstream Park in Maryland, Aqueduct in New York, and Fonner Park in Nebraska.
Meadowlands, the Standardbred track in New Jersey, displayed a notice to horseplayers on its simulcast signal that guaranteed pools for multi-race wagers on the night would not be guaranteed in the event of a tote communication error.
Horses for the Tampa Bay Derby remained in the saddling paddock for more than a half-hour longer than normal as officials hoped that service would be restored. Finally, the decision was made to run the race without wagering.
It isn't clear how multi-race wagers at Tampa Bay Downs would be handled.
“Due to the ongoing delay, the status of all wagers involving the 10th (Florida Oaks), 11th (Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby) and 12th races have yet to be resolved,” Tampa Bay Downs vice president of marketing and publicity, Margo Flynn, said in a statement shortly after 7 p.m. ET. “The issues will be addressed tomorrow, with our first priority to pay out on all winning wagers made prior to the tote shutdown.and for refunds to be made where appropriate.”
AmTote is part of 1/ST Technology, a division of The Stronach Group that owns Gulfstream Park, Laurel, Pimlico, Santa Anita, Golden Gate Fields, and the Xpressbet online wagering platform, which was also affected.
Aidan Butler, president of 1/ST, issued the following statement to the Paulick Report on the tote failure: "I have initiated a full-scale investigation into the loss of connectivity between AmTote and certain racetracks. I do not have the final results as of yet, but it appears to be a wider spread communication outage that took down both the primary and backup communications. This outage affected multiple telecom/internet service providers and was much broader than the racing industry."
Earlier this year, officials at Santa Anita were forced to seed a Pick 5 carryover when an AmTote error led the track to apply the carryover to the wrong pool.
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