from the USTA Communications Department

Columbus, OH — An internal audit of the USTA database conducted on the morning of April 5, 2013, revealed inaccuracies in the “YTD 2012” figures posted as part of its daily online Economic Indicators on U.S. Races chart. The actual 2012 handle was greater than what was reported.

“We discovered a glitch in our coding that was deleting 2012 handle from one track each day that we entered wagering figures for the comparable day in 2013,” explained USTA Executive Vice President/CEO Mike Tanner. “So while this year’s figures were accurate, the actual handle for last year was higher than what we had on our website. As a result, we removed last year’s figures and the comparisons until we could verify they were accurate.

“We apologize for any inconvenience caused by these inadvertent errors,” added Tanner.

There were also some corrupted data files from 2012 that caused other minor discrepancies.

The coding has been corrected, data files repaired and a secondary source for handle information directly from the racetracks has been utilized to update the 2012 wagering totals.

The result is that the revised total handle for 2012 is $1.511 billion and the current increase in 2013 is approximately five percent.

In addition, safeguards, which double check the tote data, as well as a manual override capability have been added to the data processing to prevent these issues in the future.

Click here for the corrected figures and comparisons on the USTA website.