Off-track betting continues to grow in Casper

A longtime Casper liquor store is changing hands — and will soon become the ninth off-track betting location in the area.

Poplar Wine and Spirits, which also includes Vintage Fine Wine and Martini Bar, was recently acquired by Wyoming Employee Resource Capital and Services (also known as WERCS, or Wyoming Financial Group.)

Kyle Ridgeway, chief financial officer of WERCS, told Casper City Council last week that the company specializes in taking in small businesses when the owners are looking to exit. (That evening, the council officially transferred the Poplar Wine and Spirits’ retail liquor license to WERCS.)

“We think we’re the right partner in a lot of businesses, because of our management expertise and the people we have in our organization to help bring people up — employees that were involved in the operation that otherwise wouldn’t have the capital to take the business over,” Ridgeway said.

While WERCS has many subsidiaries, including companies like Mountain West Technologies and Computer Professionals Unlimited, it also seems to have a penchant for bars and liquor stores. It bought the former C85 Pump Room in 2021, and the Keg and Cork last year, for example.

Both are now equipped with off-track betting machines operated by another business owned by WERCS: 307 Horse Racing.

Soon, Poplar Wine and Spirits will boast 50 to 75 machines of its own, according to an April 20 memo to City Manager Carter Napier from City Clerk and Assistant to the City Manager Fleur Tremel and Licensing Specialist Carla Mills-Laatsch.

The machines allow users to bet on replays of old horse races (known as “historic” betting.) It seems to be a lucrative business — a Wyoming Gaming Commission report published in September shows that in 2021, 307 Horse Racing reported a betting handle of $18 million just for historic races. Wyoming’s two bigger operators, Wyoming Horse Racing and Wyoming Downs, took handles of $597 million and $303 million, respectively.

Wyoming Horse Racing, Wyoming Downs and 307 Horse Racing currently run off-track betting machines at eight establishments in the Casper area, according to the Wyoming Gaming Commission’s website.

That’s making Natrona County a lot of money. The county received about $1.4 million in tax revenue from the 2021 races, a little over $839,000 of which went to Casper, the report says.

Ridgeway previously described WERCS as a “private equity group” in a 2021 paid post for Oil City News. Private equity is a controversial model; it’s often associated with big groups of investors that buy and manage companies only to slash their staffs and sell off assets for profit.

Former Poplar Wine and Spirits owner Mike Reid assured councilors on Tuesday that, other than adding the machines, WERCS plans to keep the establishment more or less the same while adding benefits for employees. Reid plans to continue working there to help the business transition.

“They’re going to keep the liquor store, they’re going to keep the lounge running the way it is, use the large warehouse area in the back for the gaming machines,” Reid said, “and offer our employees opportunities they don’t currently have — such as medical insurance, 401ks, those kind of things.”

The license transfer passed with councilors Amber Pollock and Kyle Gamroth — who represent wards 1 and 2, respectively — abstaining.