Inglis Digital USA
RaceBid puts the claim box online. Owners file from a phone, every claim is checked before it goes in, and the racing office sees the lot the moment the box closes. When two or more owners claim the same horse, they bid for it.
5,666 shakes were held at 71 US tracks between January 2025 and June 2026. Every one was a horse that more than one owner wanted, sold at the tag to whoever drew the lot.
How a claim moves
Five steps, start to finish.
The digital claim box
A paper slip is checked after the race, by hand, in a hurry. A digital slip is checked while the owner writes it. The trainer has already accepted the owner. The money is already confirmed on deposit with the bookkeeper. The horse, the race and the cutoff are enforced by the system, so there are no bad slips and no arguments about the clock.
The racing office gets every claim in one list with the paperwork done. The stewards get a time-stamped record of every claim, every bid and every result. Owners get a text when something happens instead of finding out at the office.
Claim funds stay in the track's horsemen's account, where they are now. Each state's claiming rules are loaded as settings, so the same platform runs at any track.
The Digital Claim Auction
The shake gives every claimant the same odds, the seller gets the tag, and the owners who lose get nothing. The auction keeps the tag as the floor and lets the claimants settle it between themselves. The seller gets what the horse was worth to the people who wanted it.
Claims were filed before the cutoff, as now.
The horse goes to that owner at the tag.
A five-minute auction opens among those owners only, starting at the tag. Bidders see the price, not each other.
A bid in the last minute adds a minute. Highest bid wins. If nobody bids above the tag, the stewards draw lots.
What stays the same
The auction runs in selected races, published in advance. Every other claiming race keeps the slip, the box and the shake. In the auction races, everything else is as it was:
Questions horsemen ask
The shake is fair, and it stays as the fallback. But when several owners want the same horse, the seller gets the tag no matter how much more the claimants would have paid, and the owners who lose get nothing. The auction puts that value back in the hands of the people who own the horses.
No. There is no shake first. If one owner claims, the horse goes at the tag. If two or more claim, the auction takes the place of the draw.
An auction rewards the owner who wants the horse most, not the one who drew the lucky number. Every bid is capped at the funds the owner already has on deposit, so nobody bids what they do not have. And the seller is often a small owner too. Under the shake they get the tag. Under the auction they get the tag at worst.
Because you win the horse you want. A contested claim will cost more than the tag, and in return you stop hoping to draw the token. Professional claimers have told us they would rather pay for the horse than wait for luck.
The race conditions decide who can enter, and none of them change. Auction races are published in advance, so a major class drop cannot slip in. The winning bid against the tag is reported for every auction, so everyone can see what the market said.
Under the shake a protection claim wins if the draw goes its way. Under the auction it has to beat every other claimant with real money. Bidders cannot see each other, nobody can bid on their own horse, and the stewards can use the auditable bid log to flag any suspicious activity.
Nothing changes. A catastrophic injury voids the claim as it does now and no auction is held. The state vet examines the horse as now and a claim is voided on the same grounds. If the system is down, the stewards run the draw at once, and an auction already closed stands.
The auction opens once the race is official and runs five minutes, adding a minute for any bid in the last minute. Owners get a text when it opens, on every price change and at the close. Bids go in from a phone in a few taps.
Inglis Digital USA. Inglis ran the first monthly digital thoroughbred auctions in the world about ten years ago, and the North American team has run online sales since 2020, first as Wanamaker's and now as Inglis Digital. On RaceBid, Inglis is a service provider to the track. It does not buy or sell claimed horses, and it never holds claimants' money.
Questions
Have a question we haven't answered, or want to talk about running RaceBid at your track? Email Kyle or Josh and they will get back to you directly.