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For a brief moment earlier this month, California experimented with what looked suspiciously like a commercial casino floor.
Santa Anita Park, the racetrack in Arcadia, decided to install 26 new gaming terminals. These machines, branded as Racing on Demand, instantly appeared on the grandstand floor on a Thursday morning.
By Saturday night, they were gone.
Authorities had taken every single one of the machines away.
How the disappearing machines work
The gambling machines are technically known as historical horse racing machines. Instead of using a computer to pick random numbers, the results are pulled from a collection of thousands of real races that happened years or even decades ago.
A player sits down, puts in a dollar, then picks the top three finishers in three separate past horse races.
To keep things fair, the machines hide the names of the jockeys and the dates of the races. Players get a tiny bit of data to help them make an educated guess, that’s all.
Once a player lock in their picks, the screen shows a quick video of the final few seconds of the races. If a player chose correctly, they win.
Why Santa Anita took the risk
You might wonder why a famous track would take such a risk. The answer is simple: Santa Anita has been looking for ways to boost their revenue.
Plus, they claim the machines were not slot machines, which would have been illegal. They saw them as parimutuel wagering, which is a way of saying bettors are playing against each other in a shared pool rather than against the house.
Track officials even claimed the machines were using a specific type of system that regulators had approved in 2024. Because players have to look at data and make choices, they were a game of skill, track officials argued.
In their view, if play requires a brain and uses a betting pool, then it is perfectly legal.
Why the cops pulled the plug
The California Department of Justice did not see it that way at all. To them, if it looks like a slot machine and acts like a slot machine, it is, indeed, a slot machine … and, therefore, an illegal gambling device unless housed in a tribal casino.
In California, tribal nations have the exclusive right to run casino-style gaming. When a racetrack starts putting in machines that have spinning lights and instant payouts, the tribes get antsy.
Indian Gaming Association leader Victor Rocha called out the track and said the track officials knew they were breaking the rules. The state agreed that no amount of “historical data” could turn a slot machine into a legal horse-betting device.
What’s next?
As expected, Santa Anita is feeling pretty salty about the whole situation. They filed a 23-page lawsuit against the Department of Justice to get their equipment back. Their main argument is that they gave the government a full legal breakdown of their plan nearly a year ago.
They feel like the state had plenty of time to say no before the machines were ever plugged in. Instead, the DOJ waited until the machines were installed, they contend.
So now, the grandstand is empty again, replaced by a lawsuit and a tale about disappearing gambling machines.
