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Tom Precious of the Blood-Horse is reporting that Delaware North, one of the six registered bidders for the long-delayed Aqueduct slot machine contract, is pulling out of the bidding. Bids are due at 4 pm today in the latest attempt to name a racino operator. Delaware North is one of the more experienced slot-machine operators among the six potential bidders, with some 10,000 slot machines scattered across the US, including the racino at the upstate New York Finger Lakes track. Presumably, the company knows how to do its sums before making a bid, so its last-minute decision to pull out is, well, troubling. Although no one at Delaware North was speaking publicly, Precious cites unnamed sources as saying that the reasons for the pullout included the 1% cut in operator fees included in the latest version of the New York state budget, the requirement that the winning bidder pony up $300 million BEFORE negotiating a final agreement with the state, and doubts as to whether New York State ca...

Now that Churchill Downs Inc.'s annual meeting is over, it's an opportune time to take a close look at the leading US race track operator's financials. As we've pointed out here in prior years, Churchill has a long-term strategy of increasing the profits from its online betting operations (Twin Spires and the newly merged YouBet) and casino gambling (in Louisiana, and now at Calder in Florida), while managing the ongoing decline of revenue from live racing. That trend continues to be evident in Churchill's numbers the calendar year 2009 and for the first quarter of 2010. In fact, it appears that the trend is accelerating. In comments at yesterday's annual meeting, and in an interview with the Lexington KY Courier-Journal , Churchill CEO Bob Evans (definitely not a racing guy) said that the future of live racing at Arlington Park in Chicago -- without slot machines and without access to loans from the Illinois state government -- was in serious doubt, ands, e...

Following hearings on the state of newspapers this past year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission staff has now prepared a discussion paper of potential policy recommendations to support the reinvention of journalism. It is a classic example of policy-making folly that starts from the premise that the government can solve any problem—even one created by consumer choices and an inefficient, poorly managed industry. Most of the proposals are based in the idea of using government mechanisms to protect newspapers against competitors and to create markets for newspapers offline and online. The FTC’s staff ignores the fact that most newspapers are profitable (the average operating profit in 2009 was 12%), but that their corporate parents are unprofitable because of high overhead costs and ill-advised debt loads taken on when advertising revenues were peaked at all time highs. It also fails to make adequate distinction between longer term trends affecting newspapers and the effects of the c...