Horse Racing has virtually no lobby in the US, they spend a couple million a year compared to 10’s of millions by Indian Casinos and by Vegas.
Horse Racing’s ability to take bets online is not a national law. So not all US residents can bet only, only those who’s state’s regulation allow it. The ability to place a bet at a US horse track varies by what state you are in and what state the race is taking place in. The industry can do this because most state horse racing regulations allow “runners” to collect bets from betters and take them to bet window and place the bet. The ability to go across state lines was allowed via the “Safe Harbor to the 1961 Wire Act” that was given to horse racing in the 1970s. The Safe Harbor was designed to help the industry by allowing Simulcast betting, that is someone at Calder in Miami could place a bet at Santa Anita in LA.
This safe harbor didn’t specify that they could take bets across state lines, it specified that they could transmit information and bets between tracks. That combined with the “Runner” laws in most horse racing states left a Loophole that has allowed online horsebooks to take bets over the phone and internet, across state lines.
While i’m sure horse racing’s lobby was very involved in the 1970’s safe harbor, it wasn’t about internet betting (as you would expect back in 1979, it was about alllowing enough races to be bet to keep local tracks from shutting down.
Finally, the US horse racing industry will not take a bet from countries that don’t allow their citizens to place bets online. So, US racing books don’t take Japanese residents, for example, but they might offer Japanese races to US bettors. This is way different than online casinos/poker from Antigua.
The horseracing industry is in disarray, they have no strong lobbying effort, they have virtually no money to spend on lobbying and basically there is a big competition between Magna Entertainment, Churchill Downs, YouBet and AmericaTab over who is going to be the internet and cable tv leaders. They also have no idea of how to market online.