A communications network failure Sunday resulted in wagering disruptions at numerous racetracks and guest locations operating through the Mid-Atlantic hub of AmTote International. Most notably, the Grade 3 Tampa Bay Derby at Tampa Bay Downs had to be run without wagering.
This network failure also affected Caymanas Park, with no dividends on the day (Saturday, March 9) announced for the ninth event won at odds of 3-1 by Box Box, with the tenth abandoned. Dividends on these two races were subsequently announced on Sunday (March 10).
AmTote in its statement said the issues were not the result of a tote-system failure. Rather, the communications network, both primary and backup, that connects the AmTote mid-Atlantic hub to other wagering hubs failed.
Roberts Communications Network provides the communications network that connects AmTote’s mid-Atlantic hub to all other tote-company wagering hubs worldwide.
RCN designs and installs the communications network in a manner designed to prevent outages of this type. However, the unprecedented nature of the connectivity outage Saturday, which impacted the third-party providers from which RCN provisions bandwidth, took down both the primary and back-up networks.
“Everyone needs to stop blaming AmTote,” said Todd Roberts, president and CEO of RCN. “This was an unprecedented failure in the primary and back-up connectivity provided to RCN by our third-party suppliers.”
When the communications links at AmTote’s hub were disrupted, it caused a breakdown in the flow of wagering data between AmTote’s Mid-Atlantic hub and all other wagering locations.
The communications disruption was not caused by any failure in RCN equipment or operations. Rather, both the primary and back-up bandwidth providers to the RCN network failed. RCN has not yet received an official reason-for-outage report from its third-party providers specifying a reason for this failure.
However, it is believed that the outage, which was much broader than just the racing industry, affected at least three major telecom-internet bandwidth providers in the geographic region that services the AmTote hub.
The AmTote and RCN teams worked throughout the night to restore service so that wagering activities could take place Sunday as normal.
