Attendance to the countries largest gambling resorts has dropped in the past year, but local racetracks and sports betting centers are seeing more people then in recent years, and the reason for this is the price of gas. With the countries average price at around 4 dollars a gallon people are not willing to drive the 3 or 4 hours they used to drive to go to the casinos.

According to Bennett Liebman, the director of the Government Law Center at the  Albany Law School the improvement at local gambling locations is due to the bad economy and fuel costs. He is the man charged with the task of tracking the gambling industry, and what they are seeing is that people will not travel when they have gambling facilities closer to home.

And New Yorkers have many choices close to home. Besides New York being the home of 8 racetracks. Thanks to more machines and a longer season at the Empire Raceway in Yonkers the numbers are up 21% from last years numbers at this time. The Empire Raceway makes up just over half of the revenue of all of the states racetracks.

This year almost all 8 of the NY racetracks have posted big gains over last year. This includes the track at Vernon Downs which is up nearly 25% making it the states number 2 earner right behind Yonkers.

Even the lottery is getting in on the added action with a 4 percent increase, bringing it up to 82 million dollars thanks to the video lottery machines that have been added at the racetracks.