How a New Jersey Sports Bar Made a $3 Million Bet and Won

OCEANPORT, N.J. — It was a weekday night, and some of the regulars were perched in the sports bar at Monmouth Park, a struggling racetrack near the Jersey Shore. A few members of the town council had rolled in after their weekly meeting for some beer and popcorn. Others were there to bet on horse races around the country, their eyes trained on a row of flat-screen televisions along a back wall showing horses barreling down the homestretch.

There was little to suggest that this spot, the William Hill Sports Bar, might in a few weeks take a turn in the national spotlight as the first venue in the country outside Nevada where gamblers can place sports bets in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision paving the way for such wagering.

The New Jersey Legislature is moving swiftly to make sports betting a reality, aiming to vote on a bill in both houses on June 7. Atlantic City’s seven casinos are waiting for lawmakers to act before discussing their plans in detail, though the Borgata will be able to eventually take bets at its horse betting operation and is developing another sports betting venue at the casino. The Meadowlands Race Track in northern New Jersey is seeking to be able to take sports bets by the start of the football season.

But in a state whose legal challenge led to the toppling of a federal law that banned the practice, perhaps no place else has been as prepared to wade into the potentially lucrative world of sports betting as the sports bar at Monmouth Park.

A room that was essentially a Formica-lined cafeteria received a $3 million dollar face-lift that started five years ago as the operator of the track and one of the world’s biggest sports betting operators formed a partnership to wager that New Jersey would prevail in its legalization efforts.

Now their bet has finally hit, and Dennis A. Drazin, the racetrack operator, and William Hill, a London-based international sports betting operation with dozens of locations in Las Vegas and across Nevada, are hoping to cash in.

“It was always going to be a sports book,” Drazin said, “so we envisioned that when we built it and put in the money, assuming that we would survive any legal challenge.”

Drazin and local officials are hopeful that sports betting will bring a sorely needed infusion of revenue to the track, which has seen its attendance atrophy in the past decade and which has significantly lagged behind its neighbors in New York and Pennsylvania. Monmouth has also been hurt by former Gov. Chris Christie’s decision in 2011 to eliminate subsidies for the state’s racetracks.

The possibility of shuttering Monmouth Park instilled fears among residents about the effect on the local economy. “Everyone in town seems to have worked here at one point,” said Joseph A. Irace, the borough council president, as he gathered a few tables together for the council members to sit around. “This is our biggest employer.”

Drazin, a trial lawyer who comes from a family steeped in local horse racing and owns, breeds and races his own horses, took over as operator of Monmouth Park in 2012, after the track had fallen on hard times. Sports betting, Drazin believed, was perhaps its last best chance to reverse its fortunes.

But he needed a partner with money who was willing to start developing a sports betting hall long before the Supreme Court even took up the case.

Fortuitously, Joe Asher, the chief executive of William Hill U.S., had read about Drazin’s legalization campaign, and he wanted in. Asher called Drazin from Las Vegas and flew to New Jersey to meet him. The two men spent a day at Monmouth Park watching the action from Drazin’s box.

One of Drazin’s horses was racing that day — and it won.

“I thought that was a good omen,” Asher said.

He agreed to pour $1 million into renovating what would become the William Hill Sports Bar, while Drazin would contribute $500,000 and later added another $500,000. Both eventually doubled those investments, and William Hill also said it would spend an additional $5 million to eventually open another betting venue at the racetrack.

Both men realize that for any sports betting operation housed at the racetrack to be successful, they would need to eat into the margins of their biggest competitor: the black market.

Since many people who bet illegally do so easily on any number of websites, the team at Monmouth will also have to go mobile to cast a wider net for customers.

“The effort is going to be and the challenge is going to be moving people from the black market into the legal market,” Asher said, adding, “It’s not like it’s just going to happen overnight.” In Nevada, the only state where sports betting has been legal, William Hill’s app accounts for about 60 percent of total wagers the company accepts. In New Jersey, the apps run by the state’s three horse racing tracks, including Monmouth, bring in a total of about $150 million in bets per year.

Launching a mobile app for the Monmouth sports betting operation would take time to ensure it abided by state regulations and had been sufficiently tested.

Despite all the preparations, William Hill has hit another small speed bump in its plan to start welcoming sports bettors as soon as Memorial Day.

Stephen M. Sweeney, the Democratic president of the New Jersey Senate, inserted language into a bill outlining sports betting regulations that would effectively ban any outlets from taking bets in the future if they opened before the bill becomes law.

For Drazin, it was just one more detour in a journey that began in 2010.

So, for a few more weeks, the William Hill Sports Bar will not have all its bells and whistles. The flat screen TVs lining the semicircle outer wall will still show ESPN and live feeds from horse tracks around the country, but the massive screens on either side of the bar, to display live sports lines, will stay dark.

But some customers are just happy that what had once seemed like a long shot will soon become a reality.

“I don’t care if they don’t take a bet until the first week of football,” said Bruce Britton, 56, as he tugged on his blue replica New York Giants jersey of Odell Beckham Jr.

He has been coming to the track since the 1970s, recalling sneaking under fences to place horse bets as a youth, and is hoping that sports betting will bring back new energy and crowds to the track.

“As long as it’s passed,” he said, “it’s coming.”