Where do Hawthorne's OTB profits go?

Stickney, IL. For Illinois harness horsemen, the sharpest question hanging over Hawthorne Race Course right now isn’t whether live racing survives past 2026. It’s what happens to the money still flowing through the track’s 11 off-track betting parlours while that question gets sorted out.

That’s not a small line item. OTB handle has long fed purse accounts for Illinois harness racing, and horsemen depend on that revenue whether or not a given horse ever sets foot at Hawthorne itself. If the parlours close or change hands without a clear plan for where their earnings land, it’s horsemen who feel it first, well before anyone sorts out the track’s longer-term future.

The mechanics behind the deadline are straightforward enough. Hawthorne’s own racing licence runs through December 31, 2026, and so does the licence held by its harness subsidiary, Suburban Downs, restored on May 13 after a suspension imposed January 26 over financial instability. No harness meeting has been scheduled beyond that date, and nothing currently on the books extends it.

If that stands, the scale of what’s ending becomes clearer set against the calendar. Illinois harness racing has run continuously since 1945, the year before pari-mutuel wagering even started at Maywood Park. An empty 2026 finish would mean the sport goes dark in the Chicago market for the first time in more than eighty years, not a pause, but the end of an unbroken run that predates the wagering system itself.

That leaves Fairmount Park, the thoroughbred track and racino across the Mississippi from St. Louis, as the only Illinois track still standing once Hawthorne’s licence lapses. Plenty in the state’s racing community had pinned hope on Fairmount picking up Hawthorne’s 11 OTB locations (Crestwood, Evergreen Park, Hoffman Estates, Joliet, Lansing, McHenry, North Aurora, Oakbrook Terrace, Prospect Heights, Rockford and Villa Park) as a way of keeping that wagering network alive under new management.

Illinois Racing Board projects manager Bob Dinneen says the numbers don’t work. State statute requires an OTB parlour to sit within 160 miles of the track holding its licence, and every one of Hawthorne’s 11 locations falls outside that radius from Fairmount. On the rule as written, Fairmount simply isn’t eligible to inherit them.

That statute is the real obstacle here, more than any lack of appetite from Fairmount or anyone else. Unless Illinois lawmakers revisit the distance requirement, or another licensed operator within range steps forward, the parlours have no obvious landing spot before the year is out.

 

by Harnesslink Media