The track and tables may heat up as Cayman Went exits and poker stays.
By JOHN SCHWARB and BOB PUTNAM
Published June 19, 2004
Fans of arguably the nation's hottest greyhound will have to move quickly to see Cayman Went at Tampa Greyhound Track after it opens Monday for live racing.
Poker players used to Derby Lane's tables won't have to move at all.
When the live season at Derby Lane ends tonight, the card room will not shut down as it had in previous years. Tampa Greyhound Track has transferred its poker rights to the St. Petersburg facility in a unique agreement.
The same state laws modified last year to allow increases in poker betting - helping bay area cardrooms cash in on a national poker craze - now allow parimutuel facilities to essentially sell their licenses to other facilities within a 35-mile radius.
Two tracks in Jacksonville exercised that right this year, but both were owned by the same company. Derby Lane and Tampa Greyhound are owned separately.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Tampa Greyhound likely will get a considerable sum. According to state records, Tampa's poker room generated $464,000 in gross revenue last season. Derby Lane's gross receipts were $1.953-million.
Under state law, 4 percent of cardroom gross revenues must be put toward racing purses, so Derby Lane will also in effect be funding Tampa's races.
"We're not losing anything, as far as particulars of the deal," Tampa Greyhound Track marketing director Hillary Fellenz said. "We thought, with as many transient people as we have here, keeping poker at Derby Lane would be a little more understandable to everyone."
Derby Lane's poker room will move from the swanky Derby Club area to the Plaza building on the east end of the facility, with 27 tables running from noon to midnight Monday through Saturday. Chief operations officer David Tiano said more tables could be added in the near future.
Tampa's room had half as many tables.
"We had the blueprints all over the place here, trying to see where we could take out a wall (to expand)," Fellenz said. "It wasn't looking to be feasible."
Derby Lane's room has experienced another surge in popularity since May with the addition of one-day No-Limit Texas Hold'em tournaments. The events resemble popular televised tournaments like ESPN's World Series of Poker, with full fields and impressive cash prizes.
Tiano said every poker tournament at Derby Lane has sold out, with fields of 120 to 150. First-place prizes have ranged up to $1,500; the price for a seat is $32 plus a house fee of $8-13.
"They're more for promotion. It's not a big money-maker necessarily," said David Roberts, director of the state's division of parimutuel wagering. "But everyone wants to do that, they want to see who's the best."
On the track, Cayman Went clearly has been the best but will not be in the area much longer after competing in the St. Petersburg Derby tonight. The fawn brindle male, which set a track record at Derby Lane with 35 wins this season, soon will move to Wheeling Downs in Wheeling, W.Va.
"Cayman has pretty much achieved everything you can accomplish here," said Francesca Field, the owner of Cayman Went's Bahama Mama kennel. "There's more of an interest with Wheeling and that will open up a new door for him and for our kennel."
The move will take place once a quarantine is lifted at the Derby Lane compound, a precautionary measure taken after an outbreak of kennel cough at Flagler Dog Track in Miami. In the meantime Cayman Went will race at Tampa.
Tampa Greyhound and Derby Lane shifted their live dates last year, allowing Tampa to start earlier in the summer for its seasonal crowds and Derby Lane to take over in early December to accommodate Pinellas County holiday tourists. Those dates continue this year, with Tampa Greyhound's live season running from June 21 to Dec. 4.
