Would there be any support for a Houston casino? Horse racing is already legal there, but neighboring states are offering higher purses, and horse breeders are leaving Texas at a fervent pace. And in an effort to combat this, the horse racing industry is prepared to fight for the legalization casino gambling.

According to the Memorial Examiner breeders registered just 300 foals eligible for horse racing in 2013. The peak for the state was more than 4,000. Concurrently, Oklahoma’s racing industry is booming, raking in $3.6 billion for the state in 2012. The Texas Racing Commission reported that in 2011, attendance dropped 12 percent, wagers dropped 23 percent, and purse revenue decreased in the five years preceding the study.

“How can we compete with surrounding states where the horses can compete for two to three times the amount of money in Louisiana or Oklahoma?” asked Andrea Young, CEO of Sam Houston Race Park. “Absent any new revenue, the ways we were going to do that was cutting our supply, allowing us to have more revenue to spread over shorter times.”

Both Louisiana and Oklahoma play host to land-based, Las Vegas-style casino resorts, and according to state research, Texans spend about $4.37 billion a year on gambling in neighboring states. Of that figure, $3.2 billion is spent on actual wagering, while the rest is spent on traveling, food, and hotels. A Houston casino could recapture some of that money. This story originally appeared on the Poker News website.