THIS SURE NEEDS SOME 'SPLAININ'

Will someone please explain this to me?


Fort Erie, a horse track near Buffalo, N.Y., listed a $50,066 payoff for a recent superfecta. The "super" is a wager that requires a bettor to correctly choose a race's first four finishers in order.
But digging a bit revealed that all superfecta wagers on the Fort Erie race totaled only $6,784.
There were no other dollars in the pot.
Most tracks offer dime wagers on superfectas. Though only a few dime bets might nail a superfecta, many tracks still act like there was a $1 or $2 superfecta payoff. Fort Erie did it for the race in question.
Say a track lists a $160,000 superfecta payoff. In truth, only four dime patrons have won $2,000 bets. Magnifying the four dime wins into a $2 payout presents a fictional $160,000 bonanza.
Misstated superfecta payoffs wouldn't fit the description of truth in packaging. Why should we be led to believe Oklahoma's Remington Park made a $143,890 superfecta payoff with only $9,468 in the wagering pool?
Streaming text of "changes" or "corrections" is another practice in desperate need of repair. On in-house screens, tracks display changes before and during programs. Changes are supposed to be an increase in a horse's assigned weight, a jockey switch, a medication alteration or an equipment change, such as "blinkers" to focus a horse's vision.
Instead, tracks clutter their essential changes text with shameless promotions and silly updates. It's fair to ask: If a track plans a garage sale of used stable items, should that event also stream with legitimate changes?
In this decidedly decentralized sport, most tracks function autonomously. If they do things well, they keep doing things well. If they do things poorly, expect more of the same. There's no correcting authority beyond rules enforcers. They have little say in vision or innovation.
Failure to establish a national racing commissioner's office continues to weaken the sport. Absent a commissioner, a national oversight group could evaluate the sport head-to-toe, suggest improvements and almost surely upgrade the sport's future. One immediate change would be never to mislead the customer on superfecta payoffs.
So here we are, three weeks from racing's main event, the Breeders' Cup. BC week could include a valuable, idea-swapping forum for track owners, presidents and other senior officials. They could meet in a hotel room or seclude themselves at the host track after the conclusion of the first day's races. They could collectively address the sport's challenges.
But not this year.
Probably not next year, either.

Well-known sports writer Hal Lundgren points out a practice in the horse racing industry that seems to be a violation of truth in advertising, but it is not.  But it should be, according to him.  It also partially explains the stories I've been hearing all summer of "pay-outs that don't seem right."

I know next-to-nothing about the horse racing industry or betting for that matter. So, my antennae went up when I read this article because it seems to give people the false impression that there are huge pay-outs at the Fort Erie track, when, in fact, the "huge pay-outs" are the result of some tortured mathematical equation known only to handicappers and track officials.

So, all you racing aficionados, your homework is to explain this article in a way that makes me feel that the taxpayer money and gaming money is being used wisely at the Fort Erie Race Track.