Churchill Downs’ $100 Million Owensboro Bet Is Paying

Owensboro Racing & Gaming is taking in about $5 million a month on historical racing machines, 19 months after Churchill Downs opened its $100 million hall.

The annex on Wrights Landing Road was built to feed Ellis Park purses and to pull players off the Indiana side of the Ohio River. Both of those bets now show up in the numbers. The $125 million “regional economic impact” line from the opening packet is still a company estimate, not a public audit.

Owensboro Racing & Gaming Opened on February 12, 2025

Churchill Downs Incorporated cut the ribbon on February 12, 2025, and called the property its seventh historical racing venue in Kentucky. Chief executive Bill Carstanjen tied the hall to tourism in eastern Daviess County and to the state’s racing circuit in the same breath.

Today marks an exciting milestone for our company as we expand our footprint in western Kentucky and further strengthen our commonwealth’s signature horse racing industry.

Bill Carstanjen, CEO, Churchill Downs Incorporated opening release

More than 1,000 people came through in the first hour. A ribbon cutting ran shortly after 11 a.m., after a February 10 soft opening whose play was pledged to two local nonprofits. General manager Steve Roof handed Fight Like a Dozer and the Opportunity Center of Owensboro $10,000 each that morning.

THE OPENING CALENDAR

1. February 21, 2024: Churchill Downs announces the Daviess County annex, aimed at a first-quarter 2025 opening.
2. January 2024: Crews break ground at U.S. 60 and Wrights Landing Road on a 20-acre site.
3. February 10, 2025: Soft opening; that night’s play is pledged to two Owensboro nonprofits.
4. February 12, 2025: Public opening, 600 machines, retail sportsbook, simulcast betting.
5. February 12, 2026: The hall marks one year in Daviess County.

Kentucky law lets a licensed track run a satellite hall within 60 miles. Owensboro sits on that string as an annex of Ellis Park in Henderson, which Churchill Downs bought in 2022 for $79 million. The company said it had already put more than $8.5 million into Ellis Park and had $5 million more slated for 2025.

The Hall on Wrights Landing Road

The address is 460 Wrights Landing Road, Owensboro, Kentucky 42303. Doors run 24 hours. Roof told reporters before opening that the building is about 71,500 square feet and can hold 2,900 people at once.

The floor was sold with 600 historical racing machines and a sportsbook, plus simulcast windows and two kitchens, the Starting Gate and the Track Kitchen. About 350 machines sit in the nonsmoking room and 250 in the smoking room, with a vestibule and a pressured air system between them. Roof said entry and soft drinks would be free.

HOW THE MACHINES PAY

• The bet: A player wagers on the recorded result of a race that has already been run, not on a live field.
• The cabinet: Reels, wilds and bonus screens look like a slot; Kentucky treats the product as pari-mutuel historical racing.
• The takeout: The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy puts the average payout near 91 percent of money bet, in line with slot floors in other states.
• The purse pipe: A slice of the play is supposed to move into thoroughbred funds that pay Ellis Park’s summer meet.

Roof, a Kentucky Wesleyan graduate who came from Oak Grove’s finance office, still runs both western Kentucky halls. Guests can move rewards between Owensboro and Ellis Park, which the company now markets as FastTrack Rewards. The two properties sit less than 40 miles apart on the company’s own map.

The Floor Has Settled Near $5 Million a Month

Owensboro does not publish its own monthly P&L. Kentucky historical racing notes compiled with J.P. Morgan’s state gaming files put the hall in a tight band through the first half of 2026. July’s take was $5 million on 588 machines, or $273 per unit per day. February, with 598 machines, came in at $4.8 million, or $286 a day.

OWENSBORO MONTHLY HHR TAKE

Those counts sit under the 600 machines installed at opening, which is normal when units are down for service. May’s notes showed 591 machines at $272 a day and called Owensboro the largest year-over-year jump in the state that month, at 12.7 percent. April was logged as a 21.8 percent leap.

This is a mid-tier Kentucky floor, not a Louisville or Oak Grove giant. Derby City’s 1,200-plus machines still clear the high teens of millions in a month. Oak Grove is in the same weight class. Owensboro’s job was never to outrun those halls. It was to put a full 24-hour product on U.S. 60 and send money back to Henderson.

Churchill Downs’ 2025 Form 10-K does not break Owensboro out on its own line. It does say the Live and Historical Racing segment added $169.1 million in net revenue last year, with Owensboro listed beside The Rose in Virginia, Roseshire, and the Casino Salem purchase. Segment adjusted EBITDA was $637.0 million, up $62.4 million, or 10.9 percent. Company net revenue hit $2,925.9 million. Project capital spending was $204.7 million, with Owensboro among the jobs on that list.

Statewide, the American Gaming Association’s Kentucky overview puts $1.02 billion in historical racing revenue for 2025, up 12.0 percent, the first time the product has cleared $1 billion in the state. The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, using Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corporation handle, puts fiscal 2025 wagers on the machines at $10.5 billion across 13 halls and 8,420 units as of May 2025.

Record Handles at Ellis Park After the Annex

The purse argument was the one Churchill Downs could not fake. Ellis Park had already been climbing before the annex opened. The 2024 meet handled $72.7 million over 25 days, up 20 percent. The first summer with Owensboro in the mix went higher.

ELLIS PARK SUMMER MEETS

The 2025 meet, which closed in late August, was up 6 percent on handle and 24.1 percent on purses. Maiden special weights were carded at $100,000, up from $71,000 in 2024. Stakes were advertised at a record $4 million across 18 races.

In a May 20, 2025 packet to the Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corporation, Ellis Park said it expected $3.4 million in anticipated KTDF funds from historical racing at Ellis Park and Owensboro through August 2025, on top of a $2.25 million transfer from Kentucky Downs and $1.75 million from Oak Grove. That $3.4 million figure is a combined forecast, not an Owensboro-only actual.

The 2026 meet, which ended August 23, handled a record $80.6 million, up 4.7 percent from $77 million, and paid more than $19.1 million in purses with 8.34 starters per race. Roof, speaking as general manager of both properties, thanked “the Tri-State community” in the meet release. Francisco Arrieta won the jockey title with 21 wins. Brendan Walsh took the trainer title with 17.

Ellis Park’s own machines did not shrink to feed the new hall. Monthly notes still show a few hundred units in Henderson, with January 2026 at $2 million on 278 machines and February at $2.2 million on 297, up 14 percent. The annex added a floor. It did not empty the old one.

Billboards Pointed Straight at Indiana

Churchill Downs’ 10-K still describes Ellis Park as five miles from Evansville, Indiana. Owensboro is farther down the river, less than an hour from Evansville and about 90 minutes from Louisville. Roof did not hide the map.

“You’ll see a lot of billboards both on the Indiana side and the Kentucky side and coming in from the Louisville area, from the Rockport area, all over Henderson and Evansville,” he said after opening. He also said the hiring net reached those same towns.

HALLS INSIDE THE SAME DRIVE

• Bally’s Evansville: The land-based casino Roof named as a southern Indiana rival, formerly Tropicana Evansville.
• French Lick Resort: A longer trip, still on the same regional board Roof used on opening week.
• Caesars Southern Indiana: Closer to Louisville than to Owensboro, and still on that list.
• Ellis Park: The sister hall in Henderson, with live racing in summer and its own historical racing floor year-round.

The company has kept planting small Kentucky halls on the same model. Marshall Yards Racing & Gaming opened February 25, 2026, in Calvert City as an annex of Oak Grove, with 225 machines. That made it Churchill Downs’ eighth historical racing site in the state. Owensboro was the western Kentucky test that Marshall Yards then copied: a highway corner, a few hundred cabinets, a sportsbook, and a purse story attached to a licensed track.

A 1.5 Percent Tax on Every Dollar Bet

Kentucky taxes historical racing at 1.5 percent of handle, the full amount bet, not of the hold. The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy says that levy is equal to about 16.4 percent if restated on a gross-gaming base, but that 7.3 percent of gross receipts actually reaches the General Fund, because 56 percent of collections is routed back into horse-industry funds.

SLOT-STYLE TAX RATES NEARBY

Patience Martin, the center’s state tax and budget fellow, has argued that the handle is booming while the public cut stays low. Lawmakers have not moved the 1.5 percent rate. A 2021 industry pledge to revisit the tax produced a task force that, in the center’s account, never took up the rate.

That is the other half of Churchill Downs’ Owensboro bet. The floor can clear about $5 million in a good month at a tax load that would be illegal in the states just across the river. Purses at Ellis Park are the political return the company can point to. The General Fund take is the part Daviess County does not control.

Staffing Beat the Original 150-Job Pitch

Company materials at announcement and at opening still listed 200 construction jobs and 150 permanent jobs, plus that $125 million annual impact figure. Roof raised the staffing number before the doors opened. After walking the floor, he said he needed 220 year-round people to keep service where he wanted it.

“I wanted to make sure we had plenty of team members to be able to give the excellent customer service that our customers expect and that I expect,” he said. He later told a local station the same 220 figure as full-time hiring. Mark Calitri, president of Visit Owensboro, repeated the 220-job count and the $100 million spend when he toured the hall later that month.

No independent study has confirmed the $125 million impact number. Tourism officials liked the product. Chamber leaders showed up for the ribbon. The measurable pieces that have landed are the 220 jobs Roof staffed, the monthly machine take in the mid-single-digit millions, and two straight record Ellis Park meets after the annex went live.

Owensboro Racing & Gaming is still the same 24-hour hall Churchill Downs opened on February 12, 2025. The $100 million is in the ground. The machines are paying. Ellis Park’s handle is still rising. The public ledger on tax and on that $125 million claim has not caught up to the floor.