Tampa Bay Downs was unable to accept bets on its biggest horse race of the year, the Tampa Bay Derby, on Saturday due to a communication malfunction involving AmTote, Roberts Communications Network, and “at least three major telecom/internet providers in the geographic region that services the AmTote hub,” according to a joint statement released by the two companies.

After a 39-minute delay to wait to see if the tote connection could be restored, the Tampa Bay Derby was run as a non-wagering event and the track decided to refund most bets on the race while paying out certain exotic wagers like the daily double and pick 6. Domestic Product wound up winning the Kentucky Derby prep race by a neck over No More Time.

After the race, Tampa Bay Downs’ top racing official, Peter Berube, told the Daily Racing Form that he had “never seen anything like” what transpired in his “30 years of racing.” He called for an independent investigation of the malfunction, adding, “We need an independent assessment. This can’t happen. This was a complete meltdown. We need to know who was at fault and make sure this never happens again.”

‘Doesn’t matter whose fault it is’

As the DRF explains, “Racing’s bet-processing network is a vast web connecting betting sites throughout the U.S. to bet-processing servers, which commingle wagers from the sites into single pools and send post-race betting data back to the sites. Calculations to update betting odds occur on frequent cycles in the lead-up to races, and then a final calculation is performed after a race is declared official.”

AmTote’s parent company is 1/ST Racing, whose president, Aidan Butler, granted an interview to Pat Cummings of the National Thoroughbred Alliance after the race.

Just finished call with 1/ST's Aidan Butler about wagering issues yesterday.

The NTA @RepoleStable are trying to make racing transparent and accountable so we can improve it for everyone. Thanks to Aidan for taking the time.

Here's our chathttps://t.co/BHMaiTPnG3

— Pat Cummings (@PatCummingsNTA) March 10, 2024

“It was … a connectivity issue in the Mid-Atlantic that took out not only us, AmTote, but took out a lot of other companies as well,” Butler told Cummings. “It was a huge [internet service provider] issue. This is really unacceptable going forward that we could find ourselves in this position. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is.”

Butler added that there would be a “full investigation” to identify preventative measures that would “render this impossible” to happen again.

Other tracks around the country were briefly affected by Saturday’s outage but were able to eventually pay out bets, and all tote services were restored on Sunday.

Photo: A. Messerschmidt/Getty Images