Stop Predatory Gambling

How is offering free slots play not predatory?

by spgadmin

The Connecticut Attorney General announced yesterday the state’s two Native American casinos will pay the state $25 million in slot revenues to compensate for promotions that allowed gamblers to use slot machines for free. State officials said Foxwoods offered some patrons coupons or electronic credits through a program called Free Play, and the Mohegan Sun had a similar promotion called eBonus.

The state said that 25 percent of the casinos’ gross operating revenues from slot machines should go to the state. While no money changed hands during the promotional slot use, the state AG maintained that the state was still owed money for the transactions.

“It is used to gamble as a substitute for actual cash,’’ the state AG said. “It is, in effect, money that people would otherwise spend out of their own pockets, so, in effect, they are wagering and it is effectively revenue.’’

But the much bigger issue here is why do casinos like Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun offer free slots play? Because they are trying to artificially stimulate demand for gambling. An intense gambling experience gives people the same buzz or high to their brain that a hit of cocaine does. In the words of a MIT professor, electronic gambling machines are designed “to approach every player as a potential addict.”

Offering free slots play allows the predatory gambling trade to expose its product to new “potential addicts” who may normally not use it. Because addicted, out-of-control gamblers are the primary source of gambling profits for casinos, the marketing practice of free play allows them to develop new ones to replace those who have already been “played to extinction.”