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New York City Off Track Betting Corporation Business Information, Profile, and History

1501 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
U.S.A.

Company Perspectives:

Our goal at NYC OTB is to provide a clean, comfortable environment to enjoy all the action and sport of horse racing.

History of New York City Off Track Betting Corporation

The New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation is a quasi-government operation run for the benefit of the city. Each year more than $1 billion is wagered on horse races at 68 OTB parlors, three teletheaters, restaurant locations, as well as via telephone accounts, which have become more popular with the introduction of OTB telecasts on a local public access cable television channel. In addition to races run at area tracks, both thoroughbred and harness, OTB also provides wagering on out-of-town locations. Long criticized as a bloated, wasteful bureaucracy, OTB has come close to being sold off in recent years. Improvements to the operations, however, have helped to stave off the transfer to private interests.

Calls for Off-Track Betting in the 1950s

While horse racing takes place at numerous facilities throughout the United States, New York City has long been the wagering capital of the sport, as well as the place where the business of off-track betting has been the center of much political debate. Early in the twentieth century, the horse racing was briefly banned in New York state, but this prohibition did little to suppress gambling. While some began advocating for the legalization of off-track betting, arguing that people would always feel compelled to wager, before the 1950s it remained a challenging position to hold for politicians. In 1944, for instance, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia denounced the idea in one of his weekly radio addresses, maintaining that off-track betting would pave the way for legalized roulette, faro, dice, and other gambling. Moreover, he stated that the city could balance its budget without "one cent of this dirty or blood money." The truth was that the state of New York was already very much dependent on its share of gambling at the local tracks, taking 5 percent of the handle (the amount bet on a race). Race tracks themselves accounted for another 5 percent of the "takeout." LaGuardia's successor, Mayor William O'Dwyer, was able to get an extra 5 percent share for the New York City in 1946, the "O'Dwyer bite," which raised the total takeout to 15 percent. Over the next several years, however, the city was unable to fend off politicians at the state level who managed to wrest away the 5 percent, thereby doubling the state's share to 10 percent. Starting in the 1950s, New York City mayors began to actively lobby for an off-track betting operation that could benefit the city coffers, which were beginning to increasingly feel a financial strain. Not only would the city not have to ask for more state funding, they argued, off-track betting would drive out illegal bookmakers and decrease the burden on the police.

The battle lines for off-track betting were essentially drawn between city Democrats and upstate Republicans. Also involved were a pair of unlikely allies: church groups opposed to gambling and the race tracks opposed to giving up a share of the takeout. The tracks simply did not believe that off-track betting would increase the betting market, as advocates argued. In 1963, Mayor Robert Wagner placed an off-track betting referendum question on the ballot for city voters. Although it held no legal effect, its support by a three-to-one-margin exerted pressure on upstate politicians, especially after Senator Jacob Javits, a leading Republican and the state's senior senator in the U.S. Congress, called for the legislature to accede to the voters' wishes. Nevertheless, over the next several years off-track betting bills died in committee or were defeated by the legislature. All the while, city officials prepared to create a corporation to run the off-track betting operations and as early as 1964 were envisioning a computerized wagering system. They also dreamed of realizing $200 million a year from the enterprise.

The breakthrough came suddenly, at the end of the 1970 legislative session, when the city projected a $630 million budget shortfall. City-backed legislation was passed permitting the creation of the New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation, a public-benefit corporation to be run by a board of directors to be appointed by the mayor. The OTB takeout would be 17 percent, with .5 percent of the handle going to the state, 1.5 percent to the tracks and horsemen, and the remaining 15 percent retained by the corporation to cover costs and generate a profit, which would then be split between the city and the state. In an attempt to lessen the impact on the tracks, OTB facilities were mandated to be uncomfortable: no food, no drink, no chairs, no bathrooms. The racing industry, taking no solace in the knowledge that OTB patrons would be made to suffer, was still outraged by the development and turned to the courts to have OTB declared unconstitutional, an effort that ultimately failed. A long-term conflict between OTB and the industry ensued, resulting, at the best of times, in an uneasy coexistence. Labor unions representing track employees were also hostile to the new venture, afraid that a long-term slide in track attendance would only be aggravated by OTB and cost them jobs.

OTB Begins Operations in 1971

To establish OTB, Mayor John Lindsay chose Howard Samuels, a former state senator who fell short in his 1970 bid for the Democratic nomination for governor. Samuels had considerable business experience, having co-founded Kordite Company, best known for the creation of Baggies. Samuels made several million dollars when the company was sold to Mobil Oil. Billed as the "New Game in Town," OTB began operations on April 8, 1971, less than a year after the passage of off-track betting legislation, becoming the first legalized off-track betting operation in the United States. The start was modest, with only two betting facilities available to take wagers on that night's harness races at Roosevelt Raceway: several windows at Grand Central Terminal and an OTB shop in Forest Hills, Queens. Mayor Lindsay held the honor of placing the first off-track bet, $2 on a pacer by the name of Moneywise at four-to-one odds. Other patrons, lacking the privileges of rank, waited in line as long as two hours to place their bets. Because OTB's computer system was not yet deemed reliable, they used three-part betting slips that took time to fill out and were then manually checked. Moveover, it was evident that the slips could easily be altered to create winning tickets.

After the first day's handle of $66,091, OTB began to ramp up its operations. By the end of its first year in operation, OTB boasted more than 50 parlors located in all five boroughs, with a daily handle of $1.2 million. It remained a controversial venture, however, with its computer system proving to be slow and unreliable and attendance at local tracks falling, thereby cutting into the takeout of both the state and tracks. Parimutuel clerks went on strike at Aqueduct to protest job cuts that the tracks attributed to the loss of patrons cause by OTB. Critics also contended that OTB was trying to dress the books. According to a March 1972 New York Times article, "By scrimping on services (no security guards or cleaners in the shops), hiring part-timers for four-hour shifts and deferring payments on such obligations as a $5 million fee for computer installation, OTB has sought to make itself appear more profitable at an earlier date than it really is."

OTB also faced a continue challenge from the New York Racing Authority (NYRA), a non-profit corporation which represented the interests of the three state thoroughbred tracks: Aqueduct, Belmont, and Saratoga. Samuels attempted to negotiate with NYRA and the harness tracks about a more equitable split in the OTB takeout, and it appeared that the two sides were on the verge of an agreement. However, relations quickly deteriorated when a racing industry-supported bill was presented in the New York legislature calling for the creation of a board, dominated by racing officials, which would consolidate all of the state's track and off-track betting commissions. Samuels vowed to fight the obvious attempt to take over OTB, suggesting that the tracks would be better served by cooperating with OTB in order to stimulate bettor interest, especially by permitting televised races.

During his tenure as the head of OTB, Samuels was able to fend off attempts to gain control of the organization. He was unsuccessful, however, in expanding the scope of the corporation to include the taking of bets on other sporting events, such as football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. His successor at OTB, Paul Scevane, who took over in March 1974, floated the idea of a betting card format, in which bettors attempted to pick the highest number of winners on a slate of games, but this concept failed to gain backing, and OTB's quest to become an all-purpose bookie gradually faded. The corporation was having enough trouble fulfilling its stated mission of generating large revenues for the city's coffers. The dream of gaining $200 million a year from OTB was dismissed from the outset of operations. In fact, annual profits peaked in 1974 when $43 million was turned over to the city. Despite the disappointment of declining profits, the city continued to collect its 5 percent share of the takeout. Even that amount would begin to fall off as OTB's annual handle peaked in fiscal 1988, totaling $1.03 billion, then began a steady slide.

OTB received mounting criticism over the years: its parlors were shabby, technology antiquated, management inept, and work force inefficient. Like so many city institutions, it had become a source for political patronage, providing high-paying, high-sounding, do-little jobs to supporters. In the early 1980s, the comptroller's office began urging OTB to cut costs, including the consolidation of branch offices, but little progress was made. OTB attempted to improve its finances by upgrading its product to spur revenues. Live calls from the race tracks were piped into OTB parlors. In 1986, OTB opened its first Teletheater, the Inside Track, in Manhattan. These changes did little to offset increased competition over gaming dollars from the state lottery and casinos in Atlantic City and on the lands of Native Americans. Illegal bookmaking operations, featuring satellite-televised races and comfortable accommodations, as well as credit, were also flourishing in the city. Moreover, the demographics of the typical OTB bettor were troubling. A survey conducted in 1991 indicated that almost 70 percent of patrons were over 45 years old. An OTB spokesman was quoted in a 1994 Forbes article as saying: "The average bettor is a 55-year-old white man who's overweight and a chain smoker. How long will that customer base be around before you don't have any customers at all?"

OTB Becomes A Political Issue in 1993 Mayoral Race

By cutting the number of OTB shops from 157 to 90, it came as no surprise that OTB's annual handle slipped from $959.2 million in 1990 to $742 million in fiscal 1994, and despite cost-savings measures, the corporation actually lost over $7.4 million that year. During Rudolph Guiliani's run for mayor in 1993, the state of OTB became a salient campaign issue when he questioned how a bookie operation could possibly lose money. In addition, Guiliani's opponent, David Dinkins, the city's first minority mayor, was troubled by his appointment to head OTB, Hazel Dukes. According to a 1994 Forbes profile of OTB, "She might have cost the mayor the election, as OTB became a symbol of ineptitude. She clearly regarded OTB as a candy jar: She fired older white managers and replaced them with nonwhites, saddling OTB with big lawsuits from the fired whites and thus adding to OTB's deficit."

Although mayoral candidate Guiliani vowed to sell OTB to private interests, after his election he allowed the corporation a chance to redeem itself. Under the leadership of Robert Palumbo, who was soon succeeded by former New York Giants football coach Allie Sherman, OTB began to show improvement. A first step was to simply clean the OTB parlors, which were notoriously dingy and marred by graffiti. Sherman also lowered OTB's overhead by closing twelve poorly performing parlors, cutting back on the number of parlors opened on Sunday to reduce double overtime for labor and eliminating staff through buy-out packages. More important to revitalizing the fortunes of OTB was a new law that allowed OTB to simulcast out-of-state races in its parlors and the March 1995 introduction of experimental in-home simulcasting of races on the city's public access cable channel, which spurred growth in new telephone accounts for both OTB and NYRA. As a result of these developments, OTB posted a $4.6 million profit for fiscal 1995 while improving the handle to $821 million.

OTB outlets featuring simulcasts were added to several restaurant locations in 1997. Although it appeared that the simulcasts mutually benefited OTB and NYRA, especially in light of the rise of Internet wagering on horse races, the two sides soon fell out over the arrangement. NYRA blamed in-home signals for a significant drop in track attendance, which OTB officials pointed out was a nationwide trend unconnected to the telecasts. After an agreement covering the pricing of track signals expired in July 1997, OTB and NYRA engaged in protracted and sometimes heated negotiations. In July 1998, NYRA pulled the plug on the home telecasts, followed in October by cutting off the feed to OTB parlors and teletheaters as well as affiliated bars and restaurants. The impasse was not settled until November 1998 when the parties finally agreed on a four-year contract.

For fiscal 2000, OTB's annual handle topped the $1 billion mark, and the corporation contributed $39.2 million to New York City. As he entered the final year of his administration, unable to run again because of imposed term limits, Mayor Guiliani sought to fulfill a long-term pledge to sell the enterprise to commercial interests, while retaining a minority interest for the city. With a minimum offer of $250 million, two bidders ultimately emerged: Magna Entertainment Corporation of Ontario, Canada, and Churchill Downs Inc. of Louisville, Kentucky, in partnership with NYRA. The sale faced several obstacles, including a lawsuit from labor unions representing 1,700 OTB employees, which maintained that the city had not properly evaluated the impact of the sale on city employees as required by law. Any deal would also require approval from the state legislature, which was far from certain. In addition, both suitors for OTB were under somewhat of an ethical cloud. NYRA was under investigation by the state attorney general's office as well as federal authorities for possible tax evasion and money laundering at its three thoroughbred tracks. One of Magna's partners, Robert W, Green, a British bookmaker and track owner, was tainted by his close association with a New Jersey businessman who had just been convicted of money laundering and bank fraud.

A deal to sell OTB to Magna twice fell apart before Mayor Guiliani was able to announce in August 2001 that a $262 million deal had been struck. Critics claimed that the sale was shortsighted, and opponents, which included NYRA and the OTB union, vowed to stop the transaction in the state legislature. The matter would be put on hold following the September 11, 2002, terrorists attacks that destroyed Manhattan's World Trade Center. It was still pending when Michael Bloomberg took over as New York's mayor in 2002. He floated the novel alternative idea of selling OTB's future revenues for a single, up-front payment, but in the end decided to delay the sale for at least a year, saying that it was uncertain whether OTB would be sold or not. In the meantime, OTB continued to conduct its wagering business and implemented measures to broaden its appeal to a wider and younger audience.

Principal Subsidiaries: NYC OTB Racing Network.

Principal Competitors: New York Racing Authority; www.youbet.com.

Related information about New York City

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New York City (officially the City of New York) is the largest city in the United States and the twelfth largest city in the world, making it a major global city. Located in the state of New York, the city has a population of over 8.1 millionU.S. Census Bureau, "Residential Population and Components of Change New York State and Counties, April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2005." With a population of 18.7 million, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the largest urban areas in the world,U.S. Census Bureau, "Annual Estimates of the Population of Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2004" (Annual Estimates of the Population of Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2005) Retrieved on 2006-08-31. yet New York has the lowest crime rate among major United States cities."NYC Is Safest City as Crime Rises in U.S., FBI Say." Bloomberg News 12 June 2006.www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aHWGwSJjpbOU&refer=us

New York City is an international center for business, finance, fashion, medicine, entertainment, media, and culture, with an extraordinary collection of museums, galleries, performance venues, media outlets, international corporations, and financial markets. The city is also home to the headquarters of the United Nations, and to many of the world's most famous skyscrapers.

Popularly known as the "Big Apple," the "Capital of the World," or the "City That Never Sleeps," the city attracts people from all over the globe who come for New York City's economic opportunity, culture, and fast-paced cosmopolitan lifestyle. -->

The region was inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans at the time of its European discovery by Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, that the area was mapped. He discovered Manhattan on September 11 1609, and continued up the river that bears his name, the Hudson River, until he arrived at the site where New York State's capital city, Albany, now stands. The Dutch established New Amsterdam in 1613, which was granted self-government in 1652 under Peter Stuyvesant. The British took the city in September 1664, and renamed it "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany. The Dutch briefly regained it in August 1673, renaming the city "New Orange," but ceded it permanently in November 1674.
Under British rule the City of New York continued to develop, and while there was growing sentiment in the city for greater political independence, the area was decidedly split in its loyalties during the New York Campaign, a series of major early battles during the American Revolutionary War. The city was under British occupation until the end of the war, and was the last port British ships evacuated in 1783.

New York City was the capital of the newly-formed United States from 1788 to 1790. In the 19th century, the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 enabled New York to overtake Boston and Philadelphia in economic importance, and local politics became dominated by a Democratic Party political machine known as Tammany Hall that drew on the support of Irish immigrants. It was also an era associated with economic and municipal integration, culminating in the consolidation of the five boroughs in 1898.Burrows and Wallace (1998).
A series of new transportation links, most notably the opening of the New York City Subway in 1904, bound together the newly-enlarged city. The Harlem Renaissance blossomed during this period, part of a larger boom in the Prohibition era that saw the city's skyline transformed by construction of the skyscrapers that have come to define New York. New York overtook London as the most populous city in the world in 1925, ending that city's century-old claim to the title.

New York City suffered during the Great Depression, which saw the end of Tammany Hall's eighty years of political dominance with the 1934 election of reformist mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. The city's government and infrastructure underwent a dramatic overhaul under LaGuardia and his controversial parks commissioner Robert Moses.

New York City played a major role in World War II as a port and a center of finance and industry. It emerged from the war as the leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America's emergence as the world's dominant economic power, the United Nations headquarters (built in 1952) emphasizing its political influence, and the rise of Abstract Expressionism displacing Paris as the center of the art world.

However, the growth of post-war suburbs saw a slow decline in the city's population. a dramatic fall in crime rates, improvements in quality of life, economic growth and new immigration renewed the formerly dying city.

The city was one of the sites of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in the destruction of the nation's tallest buildings, the World Trade Center. The Freedom Tower, intended to be exactly 1,776 feet tall (a number symbolic of the year the Declaration of Independence was written), is to be built on the site and is slated for completion by 2012.

Geography

New York City is located in the northeastern U.S., southeastern New York state, and at the mouth of the Hudson River. The city's total area is 468.9 square miles (1,214.4 km族), of which 35.31% is water. The city is situated on the three major islands of Manhattan, Staten Island, and western Long Island. The Bronx is the only borough that is part of the mainland United States.

New York City's significance as a trading city results from the natural harbor formed by Upper New York Bay, which is surrounded by Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the coast of New Jersey. It is sheltered from the Atlantic Ocean by the Narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island in Lower New York Bay.

The Hudson River flows from the Hudson Valley into New York Bay, becoming a tidal estuary that separates the Bronx and Manhattan from New Jersey. The East River, actually a tidal strait, stretches from the Long Island Sound to New York Bay, separating the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island. The Harlem River, another tidal strait between the East and Hudson Rivers, separates Manhattan from the Bronx.

The city's land has been altered considerably by human intervention, with substantial land reclamation along the waterfronts since Dutch colonial times. It is loosely divided into downtown, midtown, and uptown regions.

The Bronx (Bronx County, pop. 1,357,589) is known as the birthplace of hip hop culture, as well as the home of the New York Yankees and the largest cooperatively owned housing complex in the United States, Co-op City. It is home to the New York Mets, two of the region's three major airports, and Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, site of the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs and tennis' US Open.

Staten Island (Richmond County, pop.

Climate

Although located at a more southern latitude than Italian Tuscany or the French Riviera, New York has a humid continental climate resulting from prevailing wind patterns that bring cool air from the interior of the North American continent. Different Buses for Different Jobs, retrieved on 2006-07-19 and The city is also a leader in energy-efficient "green" office buildings, such as Hearst Tower and 7 World Trade Center.

The city is supplied with water by the vast Catskill Mountains watershed, one of the largest protected wilderness areas in the United States. New York actually has three separately recognizable skylines: Midtown Manhattan, Lower Manhattan, and Downtown Brooklyn. New York City has architecturally important buildings in a variety of styles, including French Second Empire (The Kings County Savings Bank Building), gothic revival (the Woolworth Building), Art Deco (the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building), international style (the New School, Seagram Building and Lever House), and post-modern (the AT&T Building). The Condé Nast Building is an important example of green design in American skyscrapers.

The residential parts of the city have a distinctive character from the skyscrapers of the commercial cores that is defined by the elegant brownstone rowhouses and apartment buildings which were built during the city's rapid expansion from 1870–1930. -->

Since its consolidation in 1898, New York City has been a metropolitan municipality with a "strong" mayor-council form of government. The New York City Council is a unicameral body consisting of 51 Council members whose districts are defined by geographic population boundaries.

The mayor is Michael Bloomberg, a former Democrat elected as a Republican in 2001 and re-elected in 2005 with 59% of the vote. He is known for taking control of the city's education system from the state, rezoning and economic development, sound fiscal management, and aggressive public health policy. In his second term he has made school reform and strict gun control central priorities of his administration.

As the host of the United Nations, New York City is also home to the world's largest international consular corps, comprising 105 consulates, consulates general and honorary consulates.Society of Foreign Consuls, About us. -->
New York City is a major center for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centers" for the global economy (along with London and Tokyo). The city is widely regarded as a financial capital of the world and is a major center for finance, insurance, real estate, media and the arts in the United States. The New York Stock Exchange is the world's largest stock exchange by dollar volume, while the NASDAQ is the world's largest by number of listings. Garments, chemicals, metal products, processed foods, and furniture are some of the principal products. International shipping has always been a major part of the city's economy because of New York's natural harbor, but with the advent of containerization most cargo shipping has moved from the Brooklyn waterfront across the harbor to the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal in New Jersey. the term "melting pot" was first coined to describe densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side, and according to some estimates as many as one out of every four Americans trace their ancestry roots to back to New York City. font-size: 90%;" cellspacing="3">

New York City Compared
2000 Census	NY City	NY State	U.S.
Total population	8,008,278	18,976,457	281,421,906
Population, percent change, 1990 to 2000	+9.4%	+5.5%	+13.1%
Population density	26,403/mi²	402/mi²	80/mi²
Median household income (1999)	$38,293	$43,393	$41,994
Bachelor's degree or higher	27%	27%	24%
Foreign born	36%	20%	11%
White	45%	62%	69%
Black	27%	16%	12%
Hispanic (any race)	27%	15%	13%
Asian	10%	6%	4%

The four largest countries of origin are the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, and Russia.

The city and its metropolitan area is home to the largest Jewish community outside of Israel. It is also home to nearly a quarter of the nation's Indian-Americans, and the largest African American community of any city in the country. according to a 2006 genetic survey by Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, about one in 50 New Yorkers of European origin carry a distinctive genetic signature on their Y chromosomes inherited from Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish high king of the fifth century A.D. New York City has long had a large gay community, estimated to be between 360,000 and 500,000 people.The 2000 U.S. Census recorded 25,906 gay households in New York City, or about 52,000 people, three times larger than was reported in 1990 but significantly less than other estimates. it is now the safest city in the United States with a population greater than 1,000,000 and the fourth safest among cities with populations over 500,000. 2005 Ten Safest Big Cities In 2004 New York City had a rate of 2,800 crimes per 100,000, compared with 8,959.7 in Dallas; While many credit the continuous drop in crime to innovations implemented by the NYPD in the 1990s, such as CompStat, economist Steven Levitt and others have pointed instead to broader social and economic trends.

Culture

40 million foreign and American tourists visit New York City each year. Major destinations include the Empire State Building, Broadway productions, scores of museums from the El Museo del Barrio to the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, the Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Garden, luxury shopping along Fifth and Madison Avenues, and events like the Halloween Parade in the East Village and the Tribeca Film Festival. Many of the city's ethnic enclaves, such as Jackson Heights, Flushing, and Brighton Beach are major shopping destinations for first and second generation Americans up and down the East Coast.

New York City has 28,000 acres (113 km²) of parkland and 14 miles (22 km) of public beaches. Manhattan's Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, is the most visited city park in the United States. Prospect Park in Brooklyn, also designed by Olmsted and Vaux, has a 90 acre (360,000 m²) meadow. Flushing Meadows Park, the city's third largest, was the setting for the 1939 and 1964 World's Fair in Queens. Jewish and Italian immigrants made the city famous for bagels and New York style pizza. Some 4,000 mobile food vendors licensed by the city, many immigrant-owned, have made Middle Eastern foods such as falafels and kebabs standbys of contemporary New York street food. The city's two current Major League Baseball teams are the New York Yankees and the New York Mets, which enjoy a fierce rivalry. New York City is also home to two minor league baseball teams, the New York-Penn League's Brooklyn Cyclones and Staten Island Yankees, which are affiliated with the Mets and Yankees, respectively.

In American football the city's teams are the NFL's New York Giants and New York Jets, who share a stadium outside the city limits in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The New York Rangers represent the city in ice hockey, although two other teams are in close proximity of the city, namely the New York Islanders and New Jersey Devils. New York has two NBA teams: the New York Knicks and the New Jersey Nets. The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city. Examples are the U.S. Tennis Open, the New York City Marathon, and many amateur leagues in sports such as soccer, cricket and stickball. The New York Cosmos (1971-1985) was a former franchise in the North American Soccer League, renowned for signing the great Brazilian player Pelé. Red Bull New York, formerly known as the MetroStars, is a professional soccer club based in New Jersey that participates in Major League Soccer. It is home to several of the largest media conglomerates in the world, including Time Warner, News Corporation, the Hearst Corporation, and Viacom. The city is the national headquarters of the four major American broadcast television networks, ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. It is also the home of many large cable television channels, including MTV, Fox News, HBO and Comedy Central. Presently the city is home to shock jocks Howard Stern and Opie and Anthony, conservative talk hosts Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, and the Sirius Satellite Radio network. WQHT ("Hot 97"), claims to be the nation's premier hip-hop station, while the morning radio program El Vacilón de la Mañana on WSKQ is the highest-rated Spanish-language radio show in the United States.

Public access television got its start in New York, and WNET, the city's major public television station, is a primary national provider of PBS programming. WNYC is the most listened-to public radio station in the United States.

New York City is also the home of NY1, a 24-hour news channel owned by Time Warner and broadcast on Time Warner Cable and Cablevision. about one in every three users of mass transit in the United States and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders live in New York and its suburbs. Data from the 2000 U.S. Census reveals that New York City is the only major city in the United States where more than half of all households do not own a car (the figure is even higher in Manhattan, over 75%; nationally, the rate is 8%). New York's high rate of public transit use and its pedestrian-friendly character makes it one of the most energy-efficient cities in the country. A study by the environmental organization SustainLane found New York to be the city in the United States best able to endure an oil crisis with an extended gasoline price shock in the range of US$3 to US$8 per gallon.

The New York City Subway is the largest subway system in the world when measured by track mileage (656 miles or 1,056 km of mainline track) and the world's fifth largest when measured by annual ridership (1.4 billion passenger trips in 2004). Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and LaGuardia Airport, both in Queens, and Newark Liberty International Airport in nearby Newark, New Jersey. The city's public school system, the New York City Department of Education, is the largest in the United States, and New York is home to some of the most important libraries, universities, and research centers in the world. Columbia University is an Ivy League university established in 1754, the oldest institution in the state, and New York University is the largest private, non-profit university in the United States.

The New York Public Library is one of the largest public library systems in the United States. Its Library for the Humanities research center has 39 million items in its collection, among them the first five folios of Shakespeare's plays, ancient Torah scrolls, and Alexander Hamilton's handwritten draft of the United States Constitution.

Sister Cities

Beijing, China
Budapest, Hungary
Cairo, Egypt
Jerusalem, Israel
Johannesburg, South Africa

London, United Kingdom
Madrid, Spain
Rome, Italy
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Tokyo, Japan

see under www.nyc.gov

Chronology

Key Dates:
1963: New York City voters support an off-track betting (OTB) referendum.
1970: New York State Legislature passes legislation leading to the creation of OTB.
1971: New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation begins operations.
1986: The first OTB Teletheater opens.
1995: Home simulcasting of races is initiated.
1997: The first OTB restaurant outlet opened.
2001: Agreement to sell OTB is reached but not executed.

Additional topics

Company HistoryRecreation

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