All of the nonsense about how it might lead to more allegations of race fixing...that was once the main battle cry of those who opposed "exotic wagers" like the trifecta.
Relatively speaking, horse racing has a good public image, and it should have a great one.
Look at the 1920's. Horses were commonly drugged with very hard stuff, like Heroin, for performance enhancing purposes.
Race fixing actually existed in those days. There were scandals involving "Midnight Riders" -- the Night Riders would take a horse in-tomorrow out of their stall and ride them to exhaustion, so they could bet against said horse the next day.
A horse like Old Rosebud (2-year-old champion, runaway Kentucky Derby winner, Horse of the Year as an older horse, a horse in some ways more popular than Man O' War, and he breaks down in a claiming race at age 11 and is euthanized at Aqueduct)
Technology sucked. You had to lug Chart Books around with you and buy a DRF to get decent past performances. The poor tracks, they had no simulcasting and slots revenue.
Adjusted for inflation, it cost $75 just for general admission at a New York track. Want to go to Aqueduct on a Thursday? Pay $75 just to get in.
The poor tracks, and poor horse racing. However did they manage to dominate the Sports Pages and offer fantastic purses? They even made celebrities out of dozens of their betting customers.
Betting exchanges are a step in the right direction. However, every entity in racing is out for themselves and their piece of the pie, and the long term best interest of the game always suffers because of it.
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