Racing Commission reports flat wagering and revenue for Greyhound and Thoroughbred tracks

Joe Moore, executive director of the West Virginia Racing Commission, presented wagering and revenue figures for calendar year 2024 to the Senate Finance Committee, reporting relatively flat activity across the last four years for both Greyhound and Thoroughbred racing.

Moore said Greyhound live-racing handle in 2024 was just under $348,000,000 with generated revenue of just over $13,000,000. He described the distribution of that revenue as including state and local benefits (nearly $400,000 for commission operations and county/city distributions), about $12,000,000 in track benefits (including employee pension funds), and roughly $300,000 in industry benefits.

For Thoroughbred racing, Moore reported about $412,000,000 wagered in 2024 and generated revenue slightly above $16,000,000; of that, he said more than $500,000 went to state and local benefits, approximately $7,000,000 to track benefits and about $8,000,000 to industry benefits (purse funds and development funds).

Moore noted that the charts provided to the committee covered West Virginia on-track wagering and wagering in other jurisdictions on West Virginia races but did not include simulcast wagering by patrons at West Virginia tracks on out-of-state races. He said that when simulcast wagering and advanced-deposit wagering enacted in recent years are included, handle increased by about $30,000,000 and generated roughly $4,000,000 in additional revenue.

Moore concluded that wagering and revenue have been “roughly flat” over the four years shown on the commission’s slides, with a calendar-year 2023 bump attributable to track closures elsewhere that redirected export wagers to West Virginia products.

No committee vote or action was recorded on the Racing Commission presentation; members thanked Moore for the update.