Will Illinois Still Awaiting Racinos Legalized In ’19, Hawthorne And Fairmount Opt For Status-Quo Schedules In ’26

[Wandering Eyes]

Hawthorne Race Course and Fairmount Park came into Thursday's Illinois Racing Board (IRB) after having considered and swapped back and forth 12 different versions of racing calendars for 2026 that the two tracks hoped would dovetail for the benefit of all racing in the state.

But as the Sept. 18 meeting approached the three-hour mark and differences remained over many of the same issues that have complicated the Illinois calendar the past several seasons–chief among them the state's tenuous Thoroughbred population and the fact that Hawthorne also must switch its racing surface twice in the year to accommodate Standardbred meets–stakeholders from both tracks took more than an hour's recess to hammer out a compromise that more or less will preserve the status quo from 2025 into 2026.

Hawthorne, just outside of Chicago in Stickney, will race 63 dates between Mar. 29 and Nov. 1 with 2:40 p.m. (Central) post times on Sundays and Thursdays.

Fairmount, 280 miles southwest of Hawthorne and just over the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri, will race 57 dates between Apr. 14 and Oct. 27 with 1:30 p.m. (Central) post times on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

The 2026 schedule that the IRB approved by a 9-0 vote represents a slight reduction in dates from 2025. This year, Hawthorne had been awarded 80 race dates, but it has already lopped 15 programs off that schedule. Fairmount had been assigned 55 dates for 2025.

Much as TDN reported one year ago when the issue of race dates was last addressed, Illinois is still struggling to recover from the twin blows of the 2021 closure of Arlington International Racecourse and the inability of the state's two surviving Thoroughbred venues to follow through with building their proposed racinos that the state legalized back in 2019.

While Fairmount already has a temporary casino in the grandstand open and track officials told the Illinois Gaming Board last month that owner Accel Entertainment has contracts in place to break ground in November with the goal of having additional gaming space ready by the start of the 2026 meet, Hawthorne's racino has been plagued by setbacks.

“We came in here last year with the hope of announcing our project,” Tim Carey, Hawthorne's president and general manager, said on Thursday. “We had an internal issue to Hawthorne that we weren't able to overcome with our investor. We unfortunately had to go back out to the [financing] market.

“We have done that,” Carey said. “We're committed to doing this project. We're in a very, very good position. Again, this year, we anticipate that we will be able to make an announcement sometime in the fourth quarter in terms of where we are in the project. We anticipate that if we announce [details about racino construction] in the fourth quarter [of 2025], we would be open by the fourth quarter of 2027.”

Executives with the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association (ITHA), which represents horsemen at Hawthorne, stressed to IRB commissioners that the racino can't come fast enough.

“In 2022 at Hawthorne, we raced for $14 million on the Thoroughbred side,” said David McCaffrey, the ITHA's executive director, noting that Hawthorne currently has a horse population of about 650. “In 2023 we raced for $13 million. In 2024 we raced for $11.5 million. This year, the meet's not over, but if we stay on the same clip, and there's not any reason to suggest that we won't, we'll have raced for $9 million. So we're already almost $2.5 million lower than we were last year.”

McCaffrey continued: “There is a readily available, legal, proven, dramatically effective antidote to our problems. It's a racino. And Tim acknowledges it. It has to be done. There has to be a deal that gets the casino built, or we're going to disappear.”

Added ITHA president Chris Block, “This upcoming year is absolutely pivotal. The term 'robbing Peter to pay Paul' is pretty rampant on our backstretch. Guys are really struggling to pay the bills. Owners are really struggling to stay in the game.

“I told this to Tim,” Block said. “I just hope there's an industry left here to save. We don't have any [Chicago-area track] left to tie ourselves to. It's Hawthorne, and it's the Carey family. I told Tim I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to hope that he can see it through. But it's got to come really quick here, because the balance [of survival] is falling way on the other side.”

At Fairmount, the outlook is slightly healthier, according to Illinois Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association president Jim Watkins, who represents horsemen there.

“We're not on life support. We're in the ICU. We're still growing,” Watkins said.

But, Watkins added, “Our ecosystem is still quite fragile.”

Vince Gabbert, the general manager at Fairmount Park, said that with regard to the compromises made to the overall state racing schedule, “There's things that we're giving up on our end, knowing that everybody's got a little pain in this as we work through this and try to solve some of the problems.”

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