DECEMBER 11, 2020—PHOENIX, AZ—During a meeting of the Arizona Racing Commission on Thursday representatives from Arizona Downs, Turf Paradise, and Monarch Content Management argued over the state's simulcasting contracts. No resolution to their ongoing dispute was reached. 

Commissioners failed to pass any motions related to the dispute but pledged continued work to resolve the impasse. 

Simulcast racing at major racetracks in Arizona has been disrupted amid conflicts between the Turf Paradise and Arizona Downs. Monarch brokers simulcast agreements between The Stronach Group owned tracks and some other racetracks in North America. 

The issue surrounds an Arizona law passed in 2019 requiring simulcast providers that send their races into Arizona to offer the products uniformly to all tracks and associated OTBs. In January, the Arizona Department of Gaming said that because of Monarch’s failure to comply, all signals into the state must be turned off. 

Monarch then filed a lawsuit claiming the 2019 law was unconstitutional because it is pre-empted by the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978, a federal law that covers simulcasting. 

The lawsuit claimed the selling of signals to the Arizona Downs OTBs “would be deleterious to the business interest of Monarch, Laurel Park, and the other out-of-state-racetracks, as the location of Arizona Downs’ OTB sites would create dilution of the wagering product and depress the overall consumption of content." 

Monarch had been distributing its signals to Turf Paradise in Phoenix and a network of nearly 60 OTBs but opted not to offer the same signals to seven such facilities operated by Arizona Downs. 

Due to the lack of revenue earned from Arizona Downs-associated betting parlors, the Prescott Valley facility closed in 2019 after having previously been reopened that year. 

Attorneys and officials from Monarch and Turf Paradise said today Arizona Downs had been offered the same simulcast agreement of television signals as one the one proposed to Turf Paradise, but Kory Langhofer, an attorney representing Arizona Downs, said the proposal presented to Arizona Downs would have been ruinous to sign without an offer of commingled pools for the track and its off-track betting parlors. 

"We won't sign it. It's the poison the doctor wants to drink to see if the medicine works," he said. 

Commissioners reviewed updated language in the racing statute that is meant to ensure that Arizona tracks all receive the same simulcast offer, but sides differed whether that was applicable to betting pools.