'Montana Sports Action' readying NASCAR game
By Paul F. Vang
On February 1, sports fans around the nation and beyond will be focusing their attention on Tampa, Florida, and Super Bowl XLIII (that’s 43 for us non-Romans), and the championship game establishing bragging rights in the National Football League for the next year.
For the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers, it’s the culmination of a long season filled with thrills, disappointments, injuries, and surprises.
For Montana Sports Action, however, it's time to get ready for the stock car racing season.
According to Tara Hanley, a communications specialist with Montana Lottery, January has been a time for making the transition to a new game.
“We’re in the process of getting ready for the NASCAR season,” she says. “We’re sending out materials to our retailers, testing the programming, and giving our retailers instructions for downloading the new game to their terminals.
“We think that Fantasy Racing will be a fun game to play. Rosters of drivers will update weekly, and players will have more time to pick their racing teams and place their bets, as most of the races will be held only on Sundays.
"We expect there will be more ties in this game, as there are not as many variables as there were in the football game, which may be an incentive for players to place larger bets, says Hanley. "In case of ties, payouts will be based on size of initial wagers. ”
A downloadable brochure explaining Fantasy Racing is available at <www.montanasportsaction.com>. Similar to the football game, the brochure notes that the National Association for Stock Car Racing (NASCAR) is not affiliated in any way with Fantasy Racing.
On the topic of ties, in the 17-week professional football fantasy game season, there was just one tie. That happened on the last week of the season when a player at the Half-Time Sports Bar and Casino in Great Falls and another player at the Lucky Bullet in Malta ended up with the same score, splitting the second place pool of $896.90, and after rounding, each player won $448.40.
Of the football fantasy game, Hanley commented, “We were happy with it, as a beginning into fantasy games, but we’re also happy to move on to the new game.”
C. A. (Al) Carruthers of Butte, who was just re-elected chairman of the Montana Board of Horse Racing at the Board’s winter meeting, acknowledged that the proceeds of the fantasy football season (just under $14,000) weren’t enough to increase the size of prize purses at this summer’s horse racing season.
Still, he says, “We think we’ll get by. This (fantasy pari-mutuel wagering) was brand new and there wasn’t a lot of time to get it going. Hopefully, we’ll get more people to play and it’ll bring in more revenue in the future.
George Parisot (director of Montana Lottery) was at our meeting and he assured us they’re working on improvements to the football game for next year.”
The Montana Board of Horse Racing is the beneficiary of the fantasy games, with the goal of raising money to help fund horse racing and, possibly, bring it back to some cities where horse racing no longer occurs.
The Board sanctioned horse racing dates for 2009 at Great Falls, Billings and Miles City at their winter meeting.
[i]Source: The Montana Tavern Times, January, 2009, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.[/i]