Before the Machines: Why Tracks Needed Help
Horse racing was once the most popular spectator sport in the country, with pari-mutuel betting as its only legal rival to the numbers game. That position eroded from the 1970s onward. State lotteries spread through the 1980s, Atlantic City opened in 1978, and tribal gaming grew after the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988.
Racing handle followed. Measured in constant dollars, wagering on American horse racing fell by roughly 52 percent between its 1977 peak and 2006. Smaller tracks felt it first: fewer bettors meant smaller purses, smaller purses meant short fields, and short fields drove away the remaining bettors. Breeders in states without strong purses moved their mares elsewhere or left the business.
Prairie Meadows shows how quickly a track could fail. The Altoona oval opened in 1989, was bankrupt by 1991 and was bought by Polk County in 1993. The answer Iowa found, slot machines at the track with profits shared with racing and the county, became one of the founding examples in the history of racinos.
The First Racino: West Virginia, Rhode Island and Iowa
The title of first racino has three reasonable claimants. In 1990 the West Virginia Lottery Commission placed 165 video lottery machines at Mountaineer Park in Chester as a pilot. It was the first lottery-run machine gaming at an American racetrack, and it continued even after a 1993 state court ruling questioned whether the law allowed it.
Rhode Island moved next by statute. In 1992 it authorized electronic gaming devices at Lincoln Greyhound Park and Newport Jai Alai, partly in response to Foxwoods opening across the border in Connecticut. Neither venue is a racino today: Lincoln stopped greyhound racing in 2009, and the state banned dog racing the following year.
Iowa produced the first racino on a large scale. Voters approved slots at racetracks in 1994, and Prairie Meadows opened about 1,100 machines on April 1, 1995. Machine revenue reached $119.3 million in its first twelve months. That figure, more than many regional casinos earned, persuaded other states that the first racino was a model worth copying.
Delaware and the 1994 Redevelopment Act
Delaware wrote the template that most later racino laws followed. The Horse Racing Redevelopment Act, signed in June 1994, authorized video lottery at the state’s three tracks: Delaware Park near Wilmington, Dover Downs and Harrington Raceway. The lottery would own the gaming, the tracks would run it, and purses would receive a fixed share of every dollar of net proceeds.
The Delaware machines arrived within eighteen months of the vote. Delaware Park, the thoroughbred track in Stanton outside Wilmington, opened its video lottery floor in 1995, and Dover Downs, now Bally’s Dover, opened the same year. Harrington Raceway followed on August 20, 1996, with 500 machines in a building it named Midway Slots.
Three decades later, the Delaware formula still works much as written. The lottery’s fiscal 2025 reports show purses receiving about 11 percent of net proceeds, the state about 38 percent and the tracks most of the remainder. That purse share supports thoroughbred racing at Delaware Park and harness meets at Dover and Harrington, details covered on the Delaware page.
History of Racinos Timeline: Key Dates by State
The table lists the dates that shaped each state’s racinos, from the first law to the first machines and, where it applies, the end of live racing. Dates come from state laws, regulators and contemporary reporting listed in the sources, and each state page adds the venue-level detail behind them.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1990 | West Virginia Lottery pilot puts 165 machines at Mountaineer Park |
| 1992 | Rhode Island authorizes devices at Lincoln and Newport |
| 1994 | Delaware Horse Racing Redevelopment Act; West Virginia Racetrack Video Lottery Act; Iowa vote |
| 1995 | Prairie Meadows opens slots (April 1); Delaware Park and Dover Downs open |
| 1999 | New Mexico’s first racetrack casino opens at Sunland Park |
| 2000 | Instant Racing machines open at Oaklawn Park and Southland, Arkansas |
| 2001 | New York authorizes video lottery at racetracks |
| 2002 | Delta Downs opens Louisiana’s first racetrack slots |
| 2004 | Pennsylvania Act 71; Florida Amendment 4; Saratoga opens New York’s first floor |
| 2008 | Hoosier Park opens Indiana’s first racino in June |
| 2011 | Ocean Downs opens Maryland’s first racino; Kentucky Downs launches historical racing |
| 2012 | Scioto Downs opens Ohio’s first video lottery floor (June 1) |
| 2015 | Plainridge Park opens as the only Massachusetts slots parlour |
| 2019 | Rosie’s opens at Colonial Downs, Virginia |
| 2020 | Nebraska voters approve casinos at licensed tracks |
| 2021 | Kentucky SB 120 secures historical racing in statute |
| 2022 | WarHorse Lincoln opens Nebraska’s first racino casino |
| 2025 | Fairmount Park opens Illinois’ first racetrack casino |
| 2026 | Aqueduct ends live racing (June 28); Hawthorne ends its meet early (July 19) |
The Expansion Years, 1995 to 2012
West Virginia completed its own framework with the Racetrack Video Lottery Act of 1994, letting each track county vote on machines. Table games came by local option in 2007. New Mexico’s Gaming Control Act of 1997 opened the way for casinos at its tracks, starting with Sunland Park in 1999. Louisiana’s track slots began at Delta Downs in February 2002.
New York authorized video lottery at racetracks in October 2001, and Saratoga opened the state’s first floor in January 2004. Pennsylvania passed Act 71, the Race Horse Development and Gaming Act, the same year, creating a fund that still sends a share of every slot dollar to purses. Maine, Oklahoma and Florida also legislated in 2003 and 2004.
Florida’s Amendment 4 of November 2004 let Broward and Miami-Dade counties vote on slots at existing pari-mutuels, and Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach opened its casino in November 2006. In Maine, a 2003 referendum led to slots at Bangor Raceway, and the operation grew into today’s Hollywood Casino Bangor beside the harness oval.
The second wave came later. Indiana licensed slots at Hoosier Park and Indiana Downs in 2007, Maryland voters approved video lottery in 2008, and Ocean Downs opened in January 2011. Ohio followed with an October 2011 executive order, and Scioto Downs near Columbus opened the state’s first floor on June 1, 2012. The Ohio page covers all seven venues.
Recent History of Racinos: HHR, Nebraska and Illinois
The recent history of racinos runs along two paths. One is historical horse racing, which let states without slots add machines through pari-mutuel law. Arkansas pioneered it in 2000, Kentucky Downs added terminals in 2011, and a 2020 Kentucky Supreme Court ruling nearly ended the format before lawmakers passed SB 120 in February 2021.
Virginia took the same route in 2018 to reopen Colonial Downs, and its Rosie’s halls spread across the state. The full legal story sits on the historical horse racing guide. Unlike slots, these machines can be installed in satellite halls far from any track, which has made them the largest source of racing revenue in both states.
The other path is classic casino gaming at tracks in new states. Nebraska voters approved three ballot initiatives in November 2020 with about 65 percent support, and WarHorse Lincoln opened on September 24, 2022. Illinois added racetrack casinos to its 2019 gaming law; Fairmount Park opened a temporary casino in April 2025 and added live tables in April 2026.
Closures, Conversions and Endings
Not every chapter in the history of racinos ends with growth. Greyhound racing collapsed first: Florida voters passed Amendment 13 in 2018, and the last dog race in the state ran on December 31, 2020. The former dog tracks kept their slot rooms. Iowa’s last greyhound track, in Dubuque, closed in May 2022.
Florida also loosened the link between slots and horse racing. A 2021 law let Pompano Park keep its casino without racing, and harness racing there ended in 2022; the property now operates as Harrah’s Pompano Beach. Maine lost Scarborough Downs in November 2020, leaving Bangor as the state’s only commercial harness track with a casino.
Two endings came in 2026. Hawthorne Race Course in Stickney, Illinois, held casino rights from 2019 but never built a casino; after a bankruptcy filing it ended its meet early on July 19, and a court approved a $90 million land sale. In New York, Aqueduct ended live racing on June 28 as NYRA moved winter racing to Belmont.
Resorts World New York City, the gaming hall inside the Aqueduct grandstand, had already won a downstate commercial casino license and added live table games earlier in 2026. It keeps its machines but is no longer a racino in any meaningful sense, which leaves Empire City in Yonkers as the closest track with gaming to Manhattan.