The Florida Thoroughbred Breeders' and Owners' Association (FTBOA) is in the process of taking initial steps to activate a long-dormant, non-profit, Thoroughbred-specific state racing permit with the goal of building a “modern, new Thoroughbred racing track and entertainment complex” in the Ocala area.
Lonny Powell, the FTBOA's chief executive officer, made the disclosure Tuesday during a panel discussion at the Global Symposium on Racing hosted by the University of Arizona Race Track Industry Program in Tucson.
Powell said it was the first time the FTBOA has revealed the initiative outside of internal discussions, and that the process is an attempt to have a plan of action in place to answer what have now become almost continuous threats of “decoupling” live racing requirements from gaming privileges at Florida's two remaining Thoroughbred tracks.
“I want to talk about one thing that is new, [and it's] the first time I'm going to talk about [it] in public, and it gives hope,” Powell said, acknowledging that the concept of a new track in Marion County, the epicenter of Florida's Thoroughbred breeding sector, is only in its infancy and still has many hurdles to clear.
This past spring, three pieces of legislation were active-but did not get passed into law-in the Florida legislature that could have removed the live racing stipulations for Gulfstream Park and Tampa Bay Downs to operate their respective casino and card room.
Decoupling has been a major concern in Florida for the better part of a decade. But it wasn't until this past January when the issue of Gulfstream seeking legislation that could potentially allow it to end Thoroughbred racing become a red-alert threat on the national level.
Nearly a year ago, Gulfstream's owner, The Stronach Group (TSG), told Florida's industry stakeholders it could guarantee live racing only through 2028 if the proposed bill did pass the state legislature.
And even if that legislation didn't pass, a TSG consultant told horsemen during a closed-door meeting Jan. 15, 2025, “there's no guarantee of when we will continue to race.”
Those bills did eventually fail to pass, but in August TSG filed a lawsuit against the Florida Gaming Control Commission, alleging that the 2021 statute that allowed all other classes of pari-mutuel licensees except Thoroughbreds to decouple from live racing as a condition of operating slot machines was an “unconstitutional special law [that] violates the equal protection clause of the Florida Constitution.”
With that lawsuit looming and the threat of decoupling again likely to be on the 2026 legislative radar, Powell explained Dec. 9 that it was only last week that a new entity called Ocala Thoroughbred Racing–with Powell as chief executive officer and with the FTBOA's blessing to use the permit-entered into a “mutually exclusive, multi-year agreement [with] a Delaware registered entity [that has] two principals” to try and bring the project to fruition.
Powell said those two principals are:
1) Philip Levine, who served as mayor of Miami Beach from 2013 to 2017 and was a candidate in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial election. Levine has an executive-level background in hospitality, the cruise boat industry, and in real estate investing. Levine has recently taken an interest in owning pleasure horses of different breeds, Powell said, but has no experience in racing or breeding.
2) John Morgan, a billionaire attorney based in Florida who is best known as the founder of the personal injury law firm Morgan & Morgan. Powell said Morgan has an active involvement in various Thoroughbred partnerships based in Kentucky.
Powell said it was Levine who first reached out to the FTBOA and then brought Morgan in on the deal.
“There were no handlers, no lobbyists, no lawyers, no other industry groups,” Powell said. “This was all because of Philip, and we got three guys to sit down at the table and say, 'How can we move this thing around?' We all bring different skill sets to the table, but we're also very like-minded, and that gives me hope and excitement.”
Powell outlined how the FTBOA came to control the permit that it now intends to explore using.
“The FTBOA in 2011 got the approval to own, at the time, a Quarter Horse permit that had a very narrow window to convert it to a non-profit Thoroughbred permit,” Powell said. “Shortly after my arrival [to the FTBOA] we got the conversion to the non-profit Thoroughbred permit. It had to be based in Ocala [and had to be] a wholly owned subsidiary by FTBOA. It's not transferable. It's not leasable. We can't sell it.
“During '21, the year [Florida] went all the way to the floor vote [that eventually decoupled all pari-mutuel venues except for Thoroughbred tracks], the FTBOA stood by ourselves, [with] no horsemen [involved],” Powell said. “All these extra [racing] permits that weren't active in Florida were being eliminated as part of the new Tribal compact in special session. Ours was the only one of the 12 or 14 [to survive] because it was unique, it was Thoroughbred, it was non-profit.”
And, Powell added, “Because it's non-profit, it's not [a vehicle] for somebody that wants to flip it into real estate. [And] we've kept that permit on ice over the years [in case] the racetracks ever asked to drastically reduce their live racing or they tried decoupling.”
Although Gulfstream was the most talked-about danger of the decoupling push at the 2025 legislative session, Powell said Tampa Bay Downs is also a very real threat to go dark.
“Let's make it official,” Powell said. “It wasn't just Gulfstream. Tampa Bay did a dramatic amendment to the decoupling bill to add themselves to it on the first day of the House hearing. So both of our racetracks-no matter what else anybody says, and I wish it was different-they've all said we're going to decouple, or we want to pursue it.”
As a result, Powell said, the FTBOA is “going to get serious about this permit. We're no longer going to have it on ice. We've got a lot of work to do. But it's the only permit allowed by law, because in South Florida, in order to try and replace a racetrack, unless you're at Gulfstream Park with that specific address,” you can't get a new permit.
Powell said when first faced with the 2024-25 decoupling crisis, he thought reopening Hialeah Park as a Thoroughbred venue could be the answer.
The once-majestic Hialeah, which in 1979 was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, last raced Thoroughbreds in 2001. It conducted Quarter Horse meets between 2009 and 2016.
After opening a new casino in 2013, Hialeah's ownership phased out Quarter Horse racing. By 2017 it had shifted to conducting bizarre match races between aged ponies to satisfy the state's live racing requirement.
Visiting the formerly grand Hialeah at that time, TDN's Bill Finley described the scene as a “freak show” because of its management's “sham” head-to-head competitions between unfit horses as old as 22 that shouldn't have been running for wagering purposes.
Powell said that after having his initial thoughts about revitalized Thoroughbred racing there, he soon realized that “Hialeah is [now] a decoupled Quarter Horse track. The owner gets to keep the slots without spending money on racing. What would be the motivation there? I was looking at South Florida racing over a year ago, thinking that was going to be the solution, and you run into things like this. You can't just go move a racetrack and say, 'I'm going to move slots over there.' There's no racing permits. Ours is the only one. But it's based in Marion County.
Yet, Powell postulated, there's a silver lining to the prospect of racing in the less densely populated Marion County instead of in the much more expensive-to-build South Florida.
“Guess what? That's the horse capital of the world, and we have more [horse] infrastructure there, pound for pound, than almost Lexington [Kentucky]. I mean training centers, barns, horses, proven breeding program,” Powell said.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Powell summed up. “But this is a big step for us, and we wouldn't be doing it if we didn't think we [saw] a path.”
Powell's revelation came during a panel titled Reinventing Racing's Business Model: Lessons from State Battles and Policy Shifts. His remarks were unexpected by some of the other speakers, and the topic of a potential new track in Florida quickly became the focal point of the discussion.
Damon Thayer, a former Kentucky state senator who recently retired from his job as the Senate Majority Floor Leader, where he was one of horse racing's staunchest and most important allies, was also a panelist. Thayer is now a senior advisor with Thoroughbred Racing Initiative (TRI), a group that is devoted to stopping decoupling efforts at Gulfstream and ensuring that racing in South Florida remains a vital part of the industry.
Reacting to Powell's news, Thayer said the permit was “clearly a valuable commodity” and that a potential new track in the Ocala area was “exciting.”
But Thayer also injected a dose of reality into the discussion by asking about funding and bringing up the prospect of dealing with Florida's dense political thicket that surrounds anything that has to do with gambling.
“The big question is, how much is it going to cost? Where's the money going to come from?” Thayer asked.
“To make anything happen in Florida, it's going to have to be multi-lateral. It can't be unilateral. I mean, you've got to involve the [Gulfstream] HBPA, the Tampa HBPA, Ocala Breeders' Sales Company,” among others, Thayer said.
“The other thing is, I want to do everything we can to save racing at Gulfstream Park, or, conversely, save racing in South Florida,” Thayer said.
“We are systematically seeing the destruction of racetracks in cities across America, and how in the hell are we going to make future fans [if] we don't have racetracks in America's greatest cities?” Thayer said.
Powell jumped back in to underscore that any track in Ocala could be made to work alongside a deal to save racing at Gulfstream.
“Our project in no way is designed to preclude an economically viable track in South Florida. The best location would be Gulfstream, for God's sake, if the price could be right,” Powell said.
“The question is, just like anything, where is the purse money going to come from?” Thayer repeated, paraphrasing his earlier remarks.
“Exactly,” Powell said, agreeing with Thayer but not offering specifics.
Thayer then had some news of his own: Within the next two weeks, he said, TRI will be releasing a year-long feasibility study about Florida's racing and breeding industries that could help fill in some financial blanks.
At the close of the discussion, Levine, one of the partners in the FTBOA's initiative, identified himself from the audience and offered a few remarks on his involvement.
“I know nothing about your industry. I'm learning like crazy. But the one thing I've seen, is-My God!-this industry is definitely made up of different horses. Because you all compete against each other. You don't run together.
“I look at this industry and I say if you don't start running together, there will not be an industry in the future,” Levine said. “Everybody has to work together so that this does not become some kind of Jurassic industry, that it moves on to the future.
“Now I agree with you senator, it would be fantastic to have a racetrack in Miami,” Levine said. “Hialeah, Gulfstream–it would be wonderful. I agree with you. If you can change the laws, and allow that to happen, that would be fabulous. And I think that's a great piece of the overall puzzle.
“But it's a little bit challenging in the state of Florida, knowing the politics,” Levine said.
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