Cincinnati.com – Churchill Downs executives say they remain “heavily engaged” in the pursuit of casino gambling in Kentucky.
In a conference call Thursday with stock analysts about the Louisville-based racetrack and casino company’s 2013 fourth-quarter and full-year earnings, Churchill Downs Inc. Chief Operating Officer Bill Carstanjen said that it’s “getting to crunch time of the session. We have some cause to be optimistic, but our issues are wrapped up in other issues that can affect us that are hard to predict.”
Representatives of Kentucky thoroughbred tracks and racing commission member Frank Jones met with state House Speaker Pro Tem Larry Clark, D-Louisville, last week in a last-ditch effort to get his gambling bill moving through the General Assembly this year.
Churchill CEO and chairman Bob Evans said Thursday that the Kentucky Wins campaign that Evans co-chairs has more than 71,000 likes on Facebook and in the past two weeks has generated more than 6,000 emails and 1,700 phone calls to Kentucky state legislators in favor of expanded gambling.
Churchill leaders said they remain uninterested in instant racing as a potential substitute if slots are not legalized but continue to monitor the ongoing lawsuit.
The Kentucky Supreme Court has sent the lawsuit back to Franklin Circuit Court for discovery on whether the games are pari-mutuel.
“What we’ve said for our company is we want all the ambiguities resolved by the court before would seriously look at it,” Carstanjen said.
Churchill thinks the machines “may do OK in markets where there aren’t slot machines nearby, but in a competitive market like Louisville these aren’t likely to fare well,” Carstanjen said.
“It’s hard to imagine these machines are of real interest to us.”
