Racetrack officials in New Jersey have extended a 10-year exclusive account-wagering agreement with FanDuel TV for an additional year in order to continue discussions with competitors on a more inclusive business market, officials involved in the effort said Wednesday. The extension of the agreement came after officials for Monmouth Park, the Meadowlands, and Freehold Raceway engaged in months of discussions with account-wagering operators and sports-betting companies in New Jersey, the only state where fixed-odds betting on horse races is legal. Dennis Drazin, the head of the horsemen’s company that operates Monmouth, said that the discussions were “productive” but that several major issues could not be ironed out in time to come up with a new agreement by the Feb. 28 expiration of the 10-year deal with FanDuel TV, which was previously known as TVG. “We got down to the last minute and everyone still had a number of ideas about how we might figure out the best way to open up the market,” Drazin said. “We agreed that everyone should sit down at the table over the next year to pitch their concepts on the right way to do it.” :: Bet the races on DRF Bets! Sign up with code WINNING to get a $250 Deposit Match, $10 Free Bet, and FREE DRF Formulator.  TVG first won the exclusive rights beginning in 2007, after New Jersey passed regulations that sought to award the rights to a single operator through a competitive bidding process. The network, which is one of the largest account-wagering companies in the United States, received another contract in 2013, while doing business under the name 4NJBets.com. New Jersey has become one of the most progressive betting states in the United States in the past five years after leading the charge to legalize fixed-odds wagering, an effort that culminated in a victory at the Supreme Court in 2018. Since then, Monmouth Park and the Meadowlands have made various attempts to popularize fixed-odds betting on racing, but those efforts have produced middling results, in part because of delays in roll-outs and limitations on the markets that the tracks can reach. Drazin has said that Monmouth and other racetrack officials in the state are hopeful of integrating fixed-odds betting and sports-betting into account-wagering operations in the state, and that a large number of operators in those markets were intent on participating, complicating the discussions over an overall approach to opening the market this year. “Presumably the ideal picture will be that ADW companies and sports books will all have the ability to show our races and offer betting on it,” Drazin said Wednesday. The biggest sticking point in the current negotiations, Drazin said, was the size of the host fees that operators will pay to racetracks. Host fees are the revenues received by tracks from account-wagering operators, usually based on a flat percentage of handle. Under the current contract, Drazin said, FanDuel TV is required to pay a minimum of $10 million in host fees. In recent years, the fees have run about $14 million a year, Drazin said. While host fees are relatively easy to divvy up when betting goes through parimutuel pools, the allocation can become far more complex with fixed-odds wagering, which operates on a different business model than parimutuel betting. Under the fixed-odds system, the most successful operators are those that are best at managing their risk, and not necessarily those that attract the most bets. Sports-betting companies also insist that they operate on much thinner margins than parimutuel operators, and that their payments to the industry should reflect those lower margins. Over the last several years, Drazin said, the total account-wagering handle in New Jersey, including bets made by New Jersey residents on out-of-state simulcasts, has been running at approximately $270 million. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.