Kentucky Derby: Only 1 Nevada book will have early futures

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Caesars Entertainment

After five years of competition primarily between two Las
Vegas sportsbooks, fixed-odds futures for Kentucky Derby 2025 will be written
by only one Nevada casino operator this winter.

“We are not booking a future pool moving forward,” Circa
Sports vice president Mike Palm said in a text message this week. “We are only
going to take pari-mutuel action.”

That leaves Caesars Sportsbook in Nevada as the only U.S. bookmaker that will write odds for the 151st running of America’s biggest horse
race. Three years ago Caesars acquired William Hill and its well-established
futures with roots that may be traced back 16 years to the old Lucky’s Race and
Sports Books.

Caesars will have a new oddsmaker handling horse racing.
Jason Jingeleski, 48, a native of New York, brings 17 years of Las Vegas casino
experience to the job. He took over from Paul Bach, who is taking a backseat role in the
futures that were his baby for the past decade. The transition already is under
way.

“It actually started this year,” said Jingeleski, who has
worked at Caesars or William Hill properties for most of the last six years. “Paul
had decided he didn’t want to do it anymore, and I happened to be one of the
guys in the office that actually liked horse racing, that followed it enough,
that knew what was going on. Then I started working with Paul. He asked if I would
be interested in taking over what he was doing. I said yeah, why not?”

Although Caesars will open its Kentucky Derby book as usual
in the fall, Jingeleski said he did not expect it would be before the Breeders’
Cup, as has been the case in recent years.

“Looking right now, it’s probably going to be sometime
around the (Breeders’ Cup) Juvenile,” he said. “That’s what was being kicked
around. It’s probably going to be shortly after. Like literally shortly after.”

That would be as early as Nov. 1. If recent history repeats itself,
Caesars then will have most of six months all by itself in booking Derby futures
24-7.

The Kentucky Derby Future Wager, a series of pari-mutuel
pools operated nationwide by Churchill Downs, was open a total of 19 off-and-on
days in 2023-24 starting with a three-day window in conjunction with Breeders’ Cup weekend.

The Westgate Superbook in Las Vegas booked its own Derby
futures starting April 1 this year. When asked if it would do so again in 2025,
Westgate sportsbook director John Murray said, “I’d guess March,” adding that
the race was not on his radar yet.

Jingeleski said he did not foresee any big differences on his
watch working for Caesars vice president Craig Mucklow. If anything, the
changes are coming to him, especially with six-time Derby-winning trainer Bob
Baffert eligible again for the first time since 2021.

Baffert horses always generate betting steam. Jingeleski thinks
the Hall of Fame trainer’s absence made horseplayers grow even fonder.

“Especially this year, it’s probably going to be more so
than in the past,” he said. “I just have a feeling that that’s what people are
going to gravitate towards going into this Derby. … Maybe a horse that you
would make 50-1 or maybe a 20-1 would probably be at a 10-1 or an 8-1 if it’s
with Baffert, depending upon the results of the races that they’ve raced in the
past.”

Because it is the only futures game in America that will be
open with few interruptions between the Breeders’ Cup and the Derby draw,
Caesars will have a big influence on the entire market, even though it is
available only for bettors in Nevada bettors and for players registered with licensed
proxies there.

This is the first time in recent memory that only one Nevada
operator will book Derby futures. For years William Hill competed with Wynn Las
Vegas, which got out of fixed-odds horse betting in 2018 when its longtime
sportsbook director Johnny Avello left to take the same role at DraftKings.
Avello had written futures at Bally’s in Las Vegas before he arrived at Wynn in
2005.

Circa first booked Derby futures in 2020, when COVID delayed
the race until September. Paul Zilm wrote the odds from their inception before
he left last winter. Tanner Phares took over for the rest of the run-up to the
Derby, but he left Circa and the gaming industry for a financial-sector job in
Indianapolis.

Looking forward, Jingeleski said he was eyeing Getaway Car
from the Baffert barn as a potential favorite when Caesars futures open. That
was before a fourth-place disappointment 11 days ago in the Grade 1 Del Mar
Futurity.

Now he said it looks like the winner of the Breeders’ Cup
Juvenile would be a likely candidate to be the shortest-priced of about 100-150
horses on the opening board.

“It’s going to be the favorite or the closest to the
favorite,” Jingeleski said.

Las Vegas has booked Kentucky Derby futures since the early
1980s, when legendary oddsmaker Bob Gregorka ran the Frontier and then the
Sands. Churchill Downs Inc. does not allow race and sportsbooks in other states
to write Derby futures. Nevada claims it is grandfathered in, so it remains the
lone exception.