Sport: New Game in Town

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"Fantastic!" exclaimed Howard Samuels, president of New York City's Off-Track Betting Corp. "Another big winner." Samuels, who likes to refer to himself as Howie the Horse, was not speaking of Cañonero IIs stunning victory in the Preakness, the second jewel in racing's Triple Crown. He was talking about the $1,151,686 that New Yorkers wagered on the race through O.T.B. "Once more," said Samuels, sounding more like Howie the Hustler, "it's been proved that this city can truly be Fun City."

Fun, maybe, for the plungers who put their money on Cañonero II, which paid $12.80 at O.T.B. as opposed to $8.80 at the track. But for Samuels and O.T.B., the first six weeks of operation have been something less than a lark. Like a mudder on macadam, O.T.B. has been tentatively clomping along to cries of "Foul" from racing commissions, labor unions, track owners and horse breeders. Nevertheless, O.T.B. has so far proved a winner with the group that counts most: the bettors. At Grand Central Station last week, one of nine off-track betting sites in the city, the crush of eager bettors—executives with briefcases, housewives toting shopping bags, cab drivers studying tip sheets, secretaries in hot pants—made it rush hour all day long. Although $2 bets account for 92% of the action, O.T.B. is now raking in an average daily handle of $235,000 and should begin to break even in three weeks—a full two months ahead of the projected schedule. Says Samuels: "It's beyond our wildest dreams."

Piece of the Action. Grandiose is the word for some of Samuels' other dreams. Aware that in New York City today about 90% of the bets made with bookies are on sports other than horse racing, he would dearly like to get a piece of that action as well. He is also asking the New York State legislature to 1) exclude winnings from state or local taxes, 2) reduce the legal age for betting from 21 to 18, and 3) expand racing and parimutuel betting to Sundays. Samuels, a self-made millionaire who ran unsuccessfully in New York's Democratic gubernatorial primary before taking the unsalaried O.T.B. job, is as impenetrable to criticism as the bulletproof glass in his betting offices. To the charge that O.T.B. is merely a legalized way of siphoning money away from the poor, he says, "Who's to decide what's gambling and what's entertainment? It's going on. It's here."

Off-track betting may soon be everywhere. Already several states—Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut—have sent delegations to study how New York plays the ponies. Howie the Horse is more than willing to pass on his expertise—for a fee, of course. Indeed, the purely commercial aspect of O.T.B. has been strongly stressed. "The racing industry," says Samuels, "has marketing myopia and is completely insensitive to the fact that they have not been getting their share of the recreation dollar." Hearing that kind of talk, many horse-racing fans wonder whether O.T.B. will affect the sporting aspect of racing. It might.