NYTHA Un-Endorses Empire

[ELA]

Originally Posted by Kasept

As always, strong opinion and insight from Eric.. (ELA)..

Also coming out this week with the release of the 'packages' by the bidders are the integrity scorecards. Only one of the bids DID NOT require state investigators to conduct extensive further interviews and delve deeper into background checks of the principals.. That was NYRA's..

Empire, Exselsior and CapPlay's ALL required further investigation..

Thanks Steve -- very good point on the integrity front. Personally, I don't think people realize how important this aspect was throughout the entire process vis a vis integrity being a category that the bidders were going to be scored on. More important than integrity per se, this was much broader and deeper. Both Pataki and Spitzer, regardless of where any "leaning" might have been, did not like the fact that "NY Racing" as an industry has been very fractionalized.

I think it may have been Bennett Liebman who spoke about the behavior, mindset and managerial style -- and the business model -- of the franchise holder.

Spitzer has commented that the problems he and others had with NYRA in the past, are just that -- in the past. That is huge, but more importantly it is reflective of the change in not only opinion, but in NYRA itself. As Steve's comments point out -- on this last prerequisite, NYRA was the only bidder to at least satisfy the eyes of due diligence at first glance.

Eric