Pat Cummings

Last June, Pat Cummings, executive director of the National Thoroughbred Alliance and former executive director of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, issued a stark warning about the encroaching impacts from Computer Assisted Wagering (CAW) to the men and women trying to forge a living through horse racing in the Golden State. CAW players constitute a small group of mostly anonymous, high-volume gamblers with an outsized impact on the betting markets--including in California--due to their use of sophisticated wagering technologies and the inducements offered to them in the form of attractive rates...

On this week's episode of the TDN Writers' Room, Pat Cummings fills us in on the latest updates with the National Thoroughbred Alliance.

In late October, prominent and outspoken owner Mile Repole announced that he was launching something he called the National Thoroughbred Alliance (NTA). Repole's goal is to shake things up in the industry and makes changes for the better. That will be the goal, too, of his right hand man, Pat Cummings, who came over from the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation to serve as Repole's executive director. On this week's TDN Writers' Room sponsored by Keeneland, Cummings was asked about the goals for the Alliance, how he can build consensus in a...

Late last month, owner Mike Repole announced the formation of the National Thoroughbred Alliance (NTA), an organization charged with providing emergency triage to an industry struggling with fiscal ill-health for quite some time. For executive director of the NTA, Repole tapped Pat Cummings, who previously headed the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, an organization focused on instituting change for racing's primary customers, the horseplayers and horse owners. At a press conference for the NTA's launch, Repole discussed his intentions in broad over-arching terms that were light on specifics. To put some meat...

Owner Mike Repole's efforts to form a group that he hopes can help solve some of the sport's problems and create growth in an industry that has been in a downward spiral for decades took a step forward Thursday with Repole announcing that he has formed what he is calling the National Thoroughbred Alliance (NTA). Pat Cummings, who has headed the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, has been hired as the alliance's executive director. Repole said he picked the name because he thought using the term alliance sent a message that the...

The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission is investigating a spate of pool manipulation incidents which seem to have occurred on three races run at Prairie Meadows in the last eight race days, the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation (TIF) said in a release Friday morning. Daily double pools on Sept. 4 (Races 2/3), Sept. 1 (Races 6/7) and Aug. 25 (Races 5/6) were subject to massive bets on combinations the manipulator(s) expected to lose. In each case, the bets were made in the final betting cycle when projected payouts for each combination...

It was back in 2004 that Brent Sumja made a career decision. He was among the leading trainers in Northern California, but wasn't following his true passion. That was playing the horses. So he disbanded his stable and set out to be a professional handicapper. It went well. He played the races regularly and also focused on the handicapping tournaments. In 2014, Sumja won five tournaments in a four-month span from May to September to clinch the title of 2013 Daily Racing Form NHC Tour Champion and the first prize...

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - A panel on computer-assisted wagering (CAW) and its pros and cons, and another on trainers' reactions to the new Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) regulations, took center stage at the 2023 Jockey Club Round Table Conference on Matters Pertaining to Racing held in Saratoga Springs, New York on Thursday. Patrick Cummings, the moderator of the panel on CAWs, is the Executive Director of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, a racing-industry think tank. Cummings took the panel through a brief history of parimutuel wagering and the changes...

Michael Lopez, senior director of Data and Analytics for the National Football League, will be the keynote speaker for the 71st Annual Round Table Conference on Matters Pertaining to Racing, The Jockey Club announced today. The conference will be held at the Saratoga Springs City Center in Saratoga Springs, New York, on Thursday, Aug. 3, at 10 a.m. ET. Chairman Stuart S. Janney III will preside over the conference and give insights on activities of The Jockey Club and the future of the sport. Lopez will discuss how data is...

Computer Assisted Wagering (CAW) has been a hot topic of late. What we know is that there are a handful gamblers that use computer algorithms to formulate their wagers, are allowed to make their bets at the very last second and receive substantial rebates. But there's a lot we don't know, like how much are they betting, what pools they most prefer and what affect has that had on the "regular" player? In his latest report for the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation (TIF), entitled Sharks & Minnows, TIF Executive Director Pat...

Pat Cummings joins this week's TDN Writers' Room to discuss the expansion of CAWs and their longterm impact on the sport. This week's episode is sponsored by Keeneland, the Green Group, Coolmore, WinStar, the PHBA, the KTOB, XBTV, and West Point Thoroughbreds.

Nine of the 11 largest betting pools have shown declines from all customers except computer-assisted wagering groups over the past four years, while the handle of the largest CAW groups grew dramatically, according to an extensive study of data released Monday by the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation (TIF). "The Thoroughbred Idea Foundation's analysis of data from Del Mar between 2018 and 2022 showed on an inflation-adjusted basis, per-race (or per-opportunity basis for certain bet types) CAW betting, from what is believed to be 17 accounts, has grown tremendously in the last...