When customers came to Capitol Teletrack on May 2 for the Kentucky Derby, a yearly event that still packed them in at 1776 Wabash Ave., a real estate broker’s phone number on a sign was the only proof that anyone has been inside of late.
Sandwiched between a Salvation Army store and a plasma donation center, the former Capitol Teletrack now sits vacant, frozen in the same fossilized, yesteryear amber that coats old Blockbuster video stores or photo hut kiosks. With its recent closing, the last off-track brick-and-mortar betting facility still available in Springfield is no more.
It’s true, kids, people really did once go to off-track betting parlors to put real greenbacks down on horse races broadcast on closed-circuit televisions. A real person took your money and, if you were lucky, a real person would give it back if your horse came in. Capitol Teletrack lasted longer than most people thought it would, nearly four decades.
The only place within 50 miles to see live horse racing anymore is the Fairmount Race Track and Casino in Collinsville, which hosts horse racing every Tuesday and Saturday. The only place Springfieldians with a passion for the ponies can still see live racing is at the Illinois State Fair, where harness racing has been held since the early 1900s. That will be the case again at this year’s fair.
When sports betting first became legal in Illinois in 2019 and fully functional by 2020, hope soared that the large venue in the Chatham Square Shopping Center would get a big boost. For a while, the sportsbook FanDuel had interest in taking over Capitol’s operations and making it an all-encompassing sports-betting venue. But, then came the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, about a year later, the killer app: sportsbooks that could take bets right on your smartphone. Brick-and-mortar betting operators were on the same kind of notice once served to 8-track tape companies.
Greg Harrell, a former manager of Capitol Teletrack, was surprised it held on as long as it did. Especially, Harrell said, with the roughly $13,000 rent Capitol’s owner, Accel Entertainment, had to come up with every month.
“It was just too much physical building for the business that came through the doors,” said Harrell, who today works in the IT department at Fairmount Race Track. “The typical customer was pretty well up there in age. Every year, some would die off and we couldn’t fill their seats. When the online (betting) came, even the old guys figured out how to use it and they never came back in.”
When Capitol Teletrack first opened, it was a “proper-dopper place,” Harrell said.
“It had fine dining, and you needed to wear a sport coat to get in,” he said.
Tara Rogers, who worked at Capitol Teletrack for more than 25 years and was its last manager, remembers former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson being the first customer when it opened in 1988.
“It had a great atmosphere, a lot of fun and kind of a family atmosphere among the regulars,” Rogers said, “but gradually, it only had one big, busy day, (Kentucky) Derby day.”
Horse racing, along with the bets it took in, was once one of the most popular forms of entertainment in America, with hundreds of tracks throughout. Newspapers employed daily handicappers, whose columns were among the best read in the sports section. But, other than the Kentucky Derby and the other Triple Crown races, the horse racing industry has fallen steeply. Greyhound dog racing, its cousin sport, is banned throughout the country except for West Virginia – although several states still allow off-track betting on West Virginia dog races.
“Many sports betting operators are closing retail betting sites or canceling plans to open them. The operating costs for in-person betting facilities often don’t justify the return. This is even more true with horse racing,” said Bill Speros, senior betting and predictions market analyst with Bookies.com. “Overall, the (horse racing betting) handle has fallen each year since 2021. It’s slipped from $12.2 billion to $11 billion in 2025. Meanwhile, Americans legally bet $166.94 billion on sports last year. That was up 11% from 2024.”
Rogers said Accel Entertainment “was good to us” when Capitol Teletrack closed and harbors no bad feelings. It was one of her two jobs, the other as a waitress, but she hopes off-track betting on horses can find another outlet in Springfield. It will have to be much smaller than Capitol, though.
“I think it will have to be at places like gas stations,” Rogers said.
Adrian Dater, a longtime former sportswriter in Denver and author of seven books, moved to Springfield in 2023 to get his first taste of life in the Midwest.
Good morning