In 2010, around 50 Off-Track Betting (OTB) parlors around New York City were shuttered. 1,000 employees lost their jobs. And another part of old New York went the way of the Automat and the Times Square peep show.
The New York State Legislature enacted its first off-track betting law in 1970, creating the New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation and allowing other municipalities to establish their own OTB operations. The law was intended to curb illegal bookmakers and provide a revenue source for state and local governments which took a percentage of the take. NYC OTB began taking bets in 1971.
Despite providing a near monopoly on gambling in New York City, the once $6.53 billion-a-year Off Track Betting Corporation was gone, depriving breeders, track owners, upstate horse farms, and other race-related businesses of millions of dollars.
“OTB was killed by its lavish outlays – to businesses and also to unionized workers and state agencies – and the rise of Internet gambling,” said Chris Rovzar for NY Mag in 2010. “When the state senate voted on whether to offer last-minute salvation to the struggling corporation, several key senators didn’t even bother to show up.”
By the mid-1980s, there were over 150 throughout the boroughs. Steve Harmon’s local OTB branch was on the south side of W. 72nd Street, a few doors from Broadway. ”
“I saw the OTB in the late 1970s and 1980s as a democratic (small “d”) place that was available to everyone – men, women, old, young, white, black, brown or other color,” says Stephen. “The people who bet inside or just hung around outside were so wonderful to see. Some of them looked like they had just walked out of a Damon Runyon novel. They could spend a few minutes or a few hours talking with each other and enjoying each other’s company. The OTB was a big part of the soul of that area of the Upper West Side. I was not a bettor, but I was sorry to see it go.”
“You would walk in there, and think you were in a retirement home. They didn’t all gamble, some of them just met people there.”
– Dr. Hazel Dukes, former OTB president
“They were like the way towns set up youth facilities to keep kids off the street, well OTB was the same thing, only it kept old men off the street.”
– Luc Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York
Finish Line: The Rise and Demise of Off-Track Betting
In 2016, Joseph Fusco’s documentary Finish Line: The Rise and Demise of Off-Track Betting looked at what happened to OTB and what came next. It’s the story of what happens to people when a billion dollar operation goes out of business.
Off-Track Betting Documentary from J & J Studios on Vimeo.
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