Regional Casinos

Schools in Maryland aren’t seeing the funding promised from casinos

Government Revenues from Gambling, Investigative Journalism, Regional Casinos

In 2012, faced with a referendum on gambling on which voters would decide the fate of gambling in Maryland, Governor Martin O’Malley promised his constituents that casinos would bring in necessary revenue for education funding. He equated gambling with a win for education. Now, two years later, schools in Maryland are looking for the money they were promised because so far, it hasn’t come. Just as with other states, education funding from casinos has fallen far short of what was promised. This article from the Maryland Reporter explains how once again, schools are losing out on much-needed funding.

Despite campaign promises, casinos, not schools, are big winners from gambling profits

Casino data can be used to spot and prevent problem gambling….but casinos purposely don’t do it

Investigative Journalism, Online Gambling, Predatory Business Practices, Public Health, Regional Casinos

According to this article from The Wall Street Journal, the same data casinos use to track customers’ gambling habits can be used to identify gambling addicts. Casino customer-tracking information could create computerized models that can spot and warn people with high risk profiles. But what do casino operators, who extract more than half their profits from addicts, think of the idea? “I think it’s a terrible idea,” said former Caesars head Gary Loveman.

Researchers Bet Casino Data Can Identify Gambling Addicts

Link found between problem gambling and family violence

Lotteries, Online Gambling, Public Health, Regional Casinos, Sports Betting, Studies, Women, Youth

A new study by the Problem Gambling Research and Treatment Centre at the University of Melbourne, Australia shows a strong link between problem gambling and familial violence. Fifty-three percent of problem gamblers reported some form of family violence in the past 12 months and Forty-four percent reported victimization in the home. These disturbing numbers show yet another effect of problem gambling, and shows further why more commercialized gambling isn’t a good thing. This HealthCanal study summarizes the study’s findings.

Problem gambling and family violence strongly linked says new study

Casinos spend millions in promotional gambling credits to lure citizens back and lose more money

Investigative Journalism, Predatory Business Practices, Regional Casinos

Casinos are spending more and more money on “free play” promotional credits, which lure players into the casino only to lose all the money from the credit plus some of their own cash. Casinos figure that if they send you a $25 free play credit and you come in to the casino and cash it in, by the time you leave you’ll have given back well over that $25. That is part of the reason why, according to this Press of Atlantic City story, casinos are now spending 40 cents of every dollar in profit on these promotional credits, to lure you in and take their money back.

Casinos spend 40% of winnings on comps

Maryland casino fight sees influence of big money from casinos

Investigative Journalism, Regional Casinos

A November 2012 ballot initiative in Maryland regarding casinos turned out to be one of the costliest in history, due to the influence of MGM Gaming on the pro-casino side, and Penn National Gaming on the other side who wanted to eliminate the potential competition. Both sides spent millions and millions of dollars flooding the airwaves and paying groups to do door-to-door campaigning, and voters in Maryland truly got to see what happens when big casino money gets involved in politics, muddying the will of the people and letting corruption creep into elections.

Politically connected firms hit jackpot in Maryland casino fight

Casino campaign groups are not what they seem

Investigative Journalism, Regional Casinos

Everett United is a pro-casino group located in Everett, MA that paints itself as a grassroots organization, a group of citizens, that supports casinos. However, recent campaign filings show this “grassroots” group is funded largely by Steve Wynn, a casino mogul, who has pumped money into the group to support the cause. This invalidates the idea that this is a grassroots organization, as it is being propped up by casino interests.

In Everett, as in Eastie, casino campaign groups are not what they seem

Tribal leader who led fight for casinos said it was intended to be short-term solution

Investigative Journalism, Native American Casinos, Regional Casinos

This story from the Washington Post serves as an obituary for Richard Milanovich, chairman of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, who led the fight for tribal casinos. However, he never intended them to last. “It’s not our end goal,” Mr. Milanovich told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. “We know gaming won’t last. The laws will change at some point. But it’s a means to an end. It has brought us sorely needed revenue which has allowed us to diversify even more, so the future of the tribe is secure.” Thirty years after IGRA, most tribes are still promoting predatory gambling as aggressively as ever.

Key tribal leader who led effort for casinos conceeded their inevitable failure

All play and no work leads to millions for one Native American tribe

Investigative Journalism, Native American Casinos, Regional Casinos

Every day, millions of Americans get out of bed, get ready, and go to work, spending their whole day working to provide their family with necessary income. The American economy is built on hard work on the part of individuals. However, members of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Native American tribe live a very different lifestyle. “We have 99.2 percent unemployment,” Stanley R. Crooks, the tribe’s president, said as he smiled during a rare interview. “It’s entirely voluntary.” Members of this tribe receive just over $1 million annually from the tribe’s casino profits, without ever having to work to provide a good or service. Their economy is built on the profits of gamblers, and little more. There is no economy in the entire world that functions like this- where no one has to produce anything of value to reap millions. That is because it is an unsustainable economic plan, as can be seen in this article from The New York Times which documents the group’s fear of recent attempts to restrict casino gambling, which would leave the tribe with essentially no source of income.

2012 One Million Each Year for All as Long as Tribe Luck Holds

Casinos in Atlantic City have failed the African-American community

Investigative Journalism, Lowering the Standard of Living for Ordinary Citizens, Regional Casinos

This article from The Grio outlines why the casino industry in Atlantic City have proved a detriment, not an aid, to the African-American community in the city. For years, the city government has served the needs of the casinos in a desperate attempt to save their falling revenues, ignoring the city’s many African-American workers, and leaving them behind. Casinos came to the city because they were the supposed savior of the city’s financial problems, however the African-American community can attest that in its wake, the casino industry has decimated the city, leaving it on the financial respirator, and on its last limb.

2014 How Atlantic City’s promise failed its black community

Release of online gambling data shows that gambling to get rich is a bad bet

Fraud, Investigative Journalism, Online Gambling, Predatory Business Practices, Regional Casinos, Sports Betting

Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment, a major European online gambling company, released data on 4222 gamblers, and the math behind gambling win probabilities shows just how badly the odds are stacked against gamblers. Experts say these data figures are comparable to those of real casino here in the US, however casinos keep their data a heavily-guarded secret. The figures released show that statistically, the more you play, the more you’ll lose- the heaviest gamblers had only a 5.4% chance of ending in the black, compared with 17% of the customers who placed the least amount of wagers. Furthermore, the data shows that casinos and gambling operations rely mostly on problem gamblers for their revenue- 2.8% of the customers provided half of the company’s profits, and 10.7% provided 80% of revenue. This The Wall Street Journal article summarizes the findings.

2013 How Often Do Gamblers Really Win- New data provide some answers