Mike Repole is the wealthy owner of many fine racehorses, including Fierceness, who is expected to be among the leading contenders in the Breeders' Cup Classic on Nov. 1 at Del Mar.
Fierceness could be worth a wager in the Classic, arguably the most prestigious race of all horse races run in the U.S. But Repole recently suggested on Twitter/X that you should not bet his horses, or any horse for that matter, if things don’t change behind the scenes in the sport of kings.
“If the track operators do not move in unison, by the beginning of 2026, I would encourage every horseplayer to stay away!!!!!” Repole exclaimed on Tuesday.
I back Dave 1000% with his stance this weekend on CAWs. Every track in the U.S. must cut off the CAWs at a minimum of 2 minutes to post in all pools.
— Repole Stable (@RepoleStable) October 21, 2025
Dave’s influence on both Gen Z and Millennials is off the charts, especially with sports and the gambling consumer.
Dave and… https://t.co/8WdxxFIyvl
What does Repole think track operators need to “move in unison,” on? That would be in restricting access for so-called “computer-assisted wagering” groups (CAWs), who use algorithms and other advantages to bet big and fast and often right up until the gates open on any given race.
This CAW betting can be swift and significant enough to shift odds and payouts for everyday horseplayers in a frustrating fashion. Concerns have also been raised about the closeness of the CAWs and the tracks.
“The CAWs are individuals with well-resourced staffs,” explained Pat Cummings, who is now the executive director of the National Thoroughbred Alliance (NTA), during a Jockey Club panel in 2023. “They develop couture models to assess vast amounts of data. They deploy finely honed algorithms to efficiently place bets, often at the last possible second, and all while receiving significant rebates for their play.”
- Prominent figures in horse racing, including billionaire owner Mike Repole and Barstool’s Dave Portnoy, are calling out the impact of computer-assisted wagering (CAW).
- CAW groups place massive last-second bets using advanced algorithms and rebates, causing sharp odds fluctuations that frustrate retail gamblers and threaten fan engagement.
- With wagering from regular bettors declining and legislative action potentially looming, some tracks are limiting CAW activity.
In other words, CAWs are not your typical bettor. They aren't the little guy. They have also become the leading suspect when it comes to big swings in pari-mutuel odds and payouts.
Veteran horse racing journalist Ray Paulick documented one such instance of this over the past weekend, when the #11 horse in a race at Keeneland was shown priced at 3/1 (+300) in the starting gate, 2/1 after the gates opened, and 3/2 by the time it crossed the finish line first.
In other words, if you bet $10 on #11 when they were 3/1, you were thinking you'd get paid around $30 in winnings. Instead, you wound up with around $15.
“Why even bother to show win odds any more?” Paulick tweeted. “The CAW are making a mockery of the game and the tracks and racing commissions are facilitating this fleecing of horseplayers.”
Why even bother to show win odds any more? The CAW are making a mockery of the game and the tracks and racing commissions are facilitating this fleecing of horseplayers. pic.twitter.com/SifAKjqrch
— Ray Paulick (@raypaulick) October 19, 2025
This is one example of rising anger and frustration with CAW wagering in horse racing, but Paulick and Repole are not the only ones sounding the alarm. Indeed, Repole's tweets on Tuesday were responding to complaints by Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, another horseowner and bettor, about the CAW effect on horse race betting.
“It’s my fav sport to bet on,” Portnoy tweeted over the weekend. “I can’t do it anymore.”
Portnoy has a big following. When he voices frustration with horse racing, his massive audience takes note. So, to lose a fan and bettor like Portnoy has to be a concern for the industry, especially one that would love to have the bet-happy Barstool demographic in its corner. Furthermore, if someone like Portnoy is complaining, how do you think smaller bettors feel?
The beef with CAWs is also growing more intense as horse racing continues to pursue new customers among the legions of sports bettors that have sprung up in the U.S. Portnoy and Barstool are even partnered with DraftKings, which has its own horse-racing app.
This is me and @elio82 talking today. We LOVE betting on horses. It’s my fav sport to bet on. I can’t do it anymore. It’s actually criminal that tracks are allowed to have their own CAW’s. The laws will eventually change just like all other sports where owners can’t bet on… https://t.co/WIeJyIq1Dy pic.twitter.com/Q7YAMwCfMl
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) October 18, 2025
However, the frustration and outrage over significant shifts in odds and payouts, attributed to CAW wagering, has become an ongoing issue for horse racing, particularly over the past few months. It's easy to see how those odds could rub the newer players that the industry desires the wrong way. One bad experience could be all it takes to send a newer horseplayer back to exclusively betting the NFL.
Do you hear the people sing?
In short, it sounds like the horse racing industry could have real problem with retail bettors. Even if it's more a problem of perception or a failure to communicate, it's still a problem.
So much so that former Kentucky lawmaker Damon Thayer felt compelled to weigh in on Wednesday with his insights.
According to Thayer (one of the proponents of legalizing sports betting in the state), some of his former colleagues in the legislature are saying “that if the tracks don’t take steps to self-regulate CAWs, legislation may be filed” in the upcoming session to do it for them.
"I prefer that the free market figure this out, but here we are in 2025," Thayer said.
One possible fix for more casual bettors could be fixed odds for horse racing, similar to what those punters get for stick-and-ball sports. That would let bettors lock in the odds on a horse, rather than bet and watch as the odds fluctuate in the pari-mutuel pools. Yet fixed-odds betting on horse racing is legal in only a few states in the U.S., and implementation and adoption overall has been slow.
I’m hearing from some of my former colleagues in the Kentucky General Assembly that if the tracks don’t take steps to self-regulate CAWs, legislation may be filed in #kyga26 dealing with it.
— damon thayer (@damon_thayer) October 22, 2025
I prefer that the free market figure this out, but here we are in 2025.… https://t.co/j0ZFjqxYIz
The fix Repole and Portnoy advocated for this week was blocking CAWs from betting at a certain point before a race goes off, such as two minutes or five minutes to post time. This is something a few tracks have already decided to do themselves.
Indeed, the complaints about CAWs have grown so loud recently that more tracks have altered their policies. At Del Mar and Santa Anita, for instance, the California tracks have recently cut off CAW wagering in the win pools at two minutes to post time. The New York Racing Association (NYRA) has had a similar policy at its tracks in place for years.
“We had taken steps to encourage CAW players to process their win wagers earlier in the cycle, but it has become clear that we need to take additional measures,” said Josh Rubinstein, Del Mar Thoroughbred Club president, in a statement this July. “We will continue to do our best to create a racing and wagering product that appeals to all segments of the horseplayer market.”
But not every track has these kinds of CAW restrictions (hence Thayer’s tweet). Clamping down on CAW action in the win pool only may also migrate that action to other pools, such as those for exactas, trifectas, and superfectas, depressing odds and payouts there.
It's complicated
It’s a complicated issue, because the CAW wagering is arguably providing a lot of betting that tracks may not be seeing otherwise. It’s out of this handle that funding comes for the horse racing industry, which may explain the hesitancy to take a firmer hand with CAWs. If you drive CAWs out of the pools entirely, you run the risk of wiping out a chunk of handle.
CAW play is being considered on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border as well.
“This is not a black-and-white issue,” said David Vivenes, executive vice president, revenue, brand and experience for the Toronto-based Woodbine Entertainment Group, in an interview with Covers in August. “It’s a complicated issue and it has both benefits and downsides.”
Vivenes said they were monitoring the CAW situation following the restrictions implemented at Del Mar, but that Woodbine was not, at that point in August, looking to institute similar restrictions.
“We do think that there’s a point of equilibrium and balance between the amount of computer wagering participation and retail bettors,” Vivenes said. “We also think it’s our job to make it as easy and as effective for retail bettors to be competitive and to stand out.”
This, he added, meant ensuring bettors were provided all of the content, insights, and tools they may require to feel as though they are not being disadvantaged versus CAWs.
“It is a balance, and we want to make sure that players that bet, day in and day out, and love the sport, continue to enjoy it and don’t feel that they’re at a significant disadvantage versus others,” Vivenes said.
Whither the little guy
Vivenes was speaking prior to Woodbine’s biggest race, the King’s Plate, which was won by a horse that opened as a 10/1 shot and crossed the finish line at 18/1. In other words, if the CAWs were compressing anyone’s odds in that race, it was the wrong horse.
Still, that’s the King’s Plate, a major race (albeit, yes, a Canadian one). A similar situation could play out starting Oct. 31 at Del Mar, when the Breeders’ Cup races begin. The vast amount of wagering on those big-ticket races could dilute any CAW-related impact on the odds, even though the two-minute cutoff for CAWs reportedly won’t be applied.
So, the more recent impact of CAWs on the average horseplayer may come clearer into focus post-Breeders’ Cup. Because, while CAW handle on horse races may be up, retail play could be down, and perhaps down enough to hold down overall wagering figures in the U.S.
Repole estimated this week on X that wagering by “the mass market horseplayer” has maybe fallen by 10% a year amid the growth of CAW wagering.
“Both the track operators and the CAWs need to wake up, because without the mass market horseplayer, soon there will be no mass market, the CAWs would compete against themselves, they’ll leave and the entire pari-mutuel market collapses,” Repole said on Tuesday. “From a business standpoint, this couldn’t be clearer. If we keep going in this direction, we will see even bigger declines and it will be impossible to get it back.”
Pari-mutuel wagering handle indeed continues to drift lower in the U.S., with Equibase recently reporting that total betting for the first nine months of 2025 was approximately $8.7 billion, down 2% from 2024.
Some of that lost wagering was due to fewer races and race days (average wagering per race was actually up year-over-year), but within those figures could be lost action from retail bettors.
Good article by @MikeMutnansky I don’t need the Caws gone. I need em cut off at 5 min. 2 min isn’t enough time. By the time they hit the tote board you have 45 seconds to figure out your bet.
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) October 19, 2025
Horseplayers Have Been Getting Screwed https://t.co/tnaEyfTOrE
Cummings, for example, said in 2023 that CAWs accounted for approximately 8% of total handle in 2003, but by 2022, their share had grown to “probably about one-third of all betting on U.S. Thoroughbred racing.”
“When you adjust these figures for inflation, the concern becomes obvious,” Cummings added. “Handle from all non-CAW customers is down by nearly two-thirds in just two decades. The greatest source of growth has been a handful of high-frequency bettors.”
Another member of the 2023 panel, Professor Marshall Gramm of Rhodes College, reported seeing similar things.
"Our middle-market player, our player who’s a weekend warrior and bets a significant amount of money, I’ve talked to many of them and they’re betting a lot less," Gramm said. "They’re getting squeezed out as a result of the shark-eat-shark environment."
Still waiting
This was back in 2023. The Jockey Club is still pondering the CAW effect.
Recently elected Jockey Club chair Everett Dobson acknowledged the tensions during his keynote address at the group's annual racing roundtable in late July, noting bettors are a key part of the sport.
“I further recognize the deep divide on the matter of computer-assisted wagering,” Dobson said. “I plan to use this position to better understand that issue and try to help the industry strike the right balance that ensures growth but does not disenfranchise the retail bettor. I look forward to my discussions with the interested parties in working towards practical solutions.”
But what will those solutions be? When will they arrive?
A growing number of retail bettors would be interested in hearing them. And some state lawmakers may not wait much longer for the industry to address the concerns of their constituents.
