Better Late Than Never: NYRA Finally Draws a Line on CAW

A Little Can Mean a Lot in Horse Racing

My Symposium Take on the CAW Issues

There are plenty of things I’ll take a racetrack to task over. Today isn’t one of those days. Today, I tip the cap.

NYRA has finally stood up and said, “Enough,” at least in a meaningful way, when it comes to Computer Assisted Wagering teams. And while it’s not everything I believe needs to be done—far from it—it’s a real move, with real teeth, and it’s coming with a date, not a someday.

That matters. Better late than never, and better NYRA than just about anybody else, because like it or not, this is one of the few entities in US racing that can actually move the needle for bettors.

What NYRA Just Announced

At the Global Symposium on Racing in Tucson, NYRA president and CEO David O’Rourke laid out the next phase of their CAW policy. Starting this January, NYRA will:

• Limit all CAW wagering to one minute to post in nearly all pools.
• Throttle CAW play in that final minute to roughly “retail levels” — capping at six bets per second. In other words, those last flurries are no longer going to look like a firehose blasting into the pools while the rest of us are using an eyedropper.
• Keep their existing guardrails in place: CAW teams will continue to have restricted access to the win pool and to key multi-race bets like the late Pick 5 and Pick 6.

O’Rourke called it part of a “multi-phased” approach: draw a line, measure the effect on the pools, and be ready to tweak again.

That’s exactly the sort of language you want to hear from someone who controls a signal as important as NYRA’s. They’re not pretending this is the final fix. They’re saying: this is the line in the sand—now we see what happens. He won me at “ready to tweak again.” Salut David!

Don’t Forget: NYRA Was Early to the Party on Win-Pool Guardrails

One point that is getting lost in the noise: NYRA was actually ahead of most of the country on win-pool cutoffs for CAW.

Long before Del Mar and Santa Anita made headlines, NYRA had already implemented a policy keeping CAW teams out of the win pool inside the final two minutes to post. Del Mar later announced their identical two-minute win-pool restriction and explicitly said they were mirroring NYRA’s policy.

Now they’re tightening again—pushing CAW to one minute to post in nearly all pools and putting a hard cap on throughput.

Is it everything I’ve argued for in my own reform piece? No. But let’s be honest: no other major operator in the US has gone this far across all pools. That’s just a fact.

Proof It’s Working: The Late-Odds Cliffs Have Already Eased

Here’s where it gets interesting, and where the numbers don’t lie.

Economist and horseplayer Marshall Gramm laid out data at the Symposium showing what happened after NYRA’s earlier CAW restrictions went in:

• Across a “typical” US track, the favorite changes in the last betting cycle about 1 in every 5 races.
• At NYRA tracks, with their CAW win-pool cutoffs already in place, the favorite only flips about 1 in 25 races in that final window.
• Over the studied period, NYRA had just 14 “major odds droppers” in the win pool—compared to 130 at Keeneland, 378 at Churchill, and 684 at Gulfstream over their respective data windows.

If accurate, and Marshall has a reputation strongly suggesting it is, that’s huge and enlightening. Those “major odds droppers” were defined as horses that increased their share of the win pool by 50% or more in that final cycle—exactly the kind of late plunge every regular player has been screaming about for years.

So when NYRA says, “We’ve already done some things and they helped, now we’re doing more,” the data backs that up. They actually moved the needle.

Now they’re going from surgical to systemic: one-minute throttle on CAW in nearly all pools, at retail-speed throughput. That’s a substantial escalation.

The Bigger Picture: Handle, CAW, and a Tilted Game

At this same Symposium, you didn’t need a translator to hear the frustration. Industry panels openly conceded what serious horseplayers have known for a long time:

• CAW volume has exploded—especially with new partnerships and integrations—
• Overall handle is down in that 5–10% range across many jurisdictions,
• And the retail player feels like they’re swimming in a tank full of piranhas.

In my reform CAW article, I said the whole point of pari-mutuel wagering is players vs. players under the same rules, same information, same takeout. Not players vs. industrial-grade algorithmic factories with privileged access points, timing, and rebates.

NYRA’s executives didn’t suddenly grow a conscience. What they did do is finally acknowledge, in a very public forum, that if you don’t put serious guardrails around CAW, you don’t have a sustainable game. You have a slow-bleed cannibalization of the very customer base you claim to want to grow.

This one-minute restriction, with capped throughput and existing pool limitations, is an admission that tilt the game too far and you kill it.

Leveling the Data Playing Field (At Least a Little)

One piece of the announcement that flew under the radar but should not be ignored: O’Rourke also floated the idea of a centralized raw data feed made available to everyone—retail players included—through the partnership between NYRA and 1/ST.

The concept:

• The same raw tote/data feed that ADWs and Elite Turf Club’s CAW players get,
• Piped into a centralized hub that any player can access,
• So that if you’ve got the skill and the coding ability, you can build your own tools instead of guessing off a dumbed-down toteboard.

Now, let’s be real: 99% of players won’t have the time, coding chops, or appetite to leverage that feed. But that 1% who can? They get to at least stand in the same warehouse as the big boys, not peeking through the keyhole.

Is that full parity? No. But it’s a philosophical shift—away from “closed club” and toward at least the possibility of open architecture.

Why “Better Late Than Never” Still Matters

Do I wish this happened five years ago? Absolutely.
Do I wish this was being adopted nationwide tomorrow? Absolutely.

But you don’t get industry-wide reform without someone going first—and doing more than lip service.

NYRA now has:

• Proven results from its earlier win-pool CAW cutoffs, showing fewer last-second collapses in odds. (TDN)
• New guardrails: one-minute throttling to retail-like throughput in nearly all pools, starting with the new year. (TDN)
• Structural intent: a “multi-phased approach” that openly admits they’ll measure, adjust, and keep tweaking. (TDN)
• A data-democratization concept with that raw feed that, if done right, could empower the small minority of players capable of turning data into real tools.

If you’ve been following what’s happening in other jurisdictions, you also know some tracks flat-out refused to put similar guardrails in place, even on their biggest days, and let CAW hammer away right to the last flash. The Breeders’ Cup was the biggest disappointment for me in that regard. I’d have thought it was a no brainer for them and I tend to dount they rely on the CAW handle the way Mountaineer likely does.

Against that backdrop, NYRA’s moves don’t look cosmetic. They look like leadership—imperfect, late, but real.

What Still Needs To Be Done (This Isn’t the Finish Line)

Commending NYRA for this doesn’t mean giving them or anyone else a free pass. This is a start, not a cure.

If you’ve read my reform piece, you already know what I think still has to be addressed:

• Rebates and pricing: Until the game is priced competitively and CAW rebate structures stop being funded on the backs of full-takeout retail players, you’re still playing a stacked deck. Even O’Rourke acknowledged that takeout needs a full recalibration if racing wants to compete with other wagering products.
• Uniform policies across jurisdictions: A NYRA-only solution helps, but it doesn’t fix what happens when your Pick 5 runs through multiple tracks or when players leave NYRA for CAW-friendlier pools elsewhere.
• Transparency on CAW deals: How big is the CAW share of the handle by track, by bet type, by time window? What are the effective net takeout rates after rebates for CAW vs. retail? Those numbers belong in the daylight.
• Harder walls in certain pools: There’s still a legitimate argument for completely CAW-free pools—especially lower-denomination bets marketed as “fan friendly” or “introductory.”

This is where the rest of the industry has to stop hiding behind “we’re studying it” and start putting lines in the sand the way NYRA just did.

Final Word: When a Track Gets One Right, Say So

I’ve been as hard on this industry’s leadership as anyone—because they’ve earned it. But they also deserve credit when they buck the trend and actually do something that benefits the everyday horseplayer instead of just the factory bettors plugged straight into the tote.

NYRA didn’t fix CAW. They didn’t restore some mythical golden age of pari-mutuel purity. But they tightened the screws, publicly, with specifics and a time frame, and they were already ahead of most of the country on win-pool guardrails.

So yes, I’ll say it plainly:

• This is a meaningful step.
• It validates what players have been complaining about for years.
• And it puts pressure on every other track and content operator to either step up or admit, out loud, that they prefer a tilted game.

Better late than never. Now let’s see who has the guts to follow.