{"id":1616,"date":"2016-04-05T07:50:43","date_gmt":"2016-04-05T07:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beyondnumbers.lvablog.com\/?p=437"},"modified":"2016-07-03T02:43:44","modified_gmt":"2016-07-03T02:43:44","slug":"local-casinos-economic-revival-or-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/local-casinos-economic-revival-or-black-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Casinos: Economic Revival, or Black Hole?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Horseshoe opened in Cleveland a couple years ago, I happened to be in the area for a wedding, and I couldn’t believe how excited these people were to get a casino! They were saying how they’d finally be a real city, and the TV news showed the people lining up on the street to be the first ones in. Everyone was talking about it, and the reporters were even explaining on TV how you had to always put your card into the machine to get your points, and then showed the chart of what the points were worth!<\/p>\n

The casino was the only topic of the day, so even sports talk radio tied it in by saying, “With this new amenity, can we attract top-tier free agents to play sports in Cleveland?” I’ve never called in to a radio show, but I was about to vomit, so I had to do it.<\/p>\n

They went to commercial but used the teaser, “Stay tuned, you’re going to want to hear what James from Las Vegas has to say!” Well, I told them like it is! I started by saying I was in the casino industry and lived in Las Vegas. I said that of all the things you could emulate about the great cities of the world, casinos were not one of them. I said that the people shown on TV waiting in line were basically the old, infirm, unemployed, and uneducated, lining up like sheep.<\/p>\n

I said the whole thing was pathetic.<\/p>\n

The talk show hosts were not happy. They cut me off, then said, “What a hypocrite\u2014he said he works for a casino, but he doesn’t think we should have casinos here?!!” Oh well, I tried.<\/p>\n

You see, I’ve seen locals casinos around the nation. If an already great city decides to get casinos, I think there’s no harm done, but if a depressed area gets casinos hoping for an economic turnaround, good luck! Tell me how good the education system is now in Tunica, Mississippi. Tell me how nice the paved roads are near the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Tell me about the economic revival that came to Gary, Indiana. Tell me about the nice restaurants in downtown Joliet.<\/p>\n

I look at casinos like bars or cigarette stands. If bars are legal, and people are OK with that, then you might as well have them spread out around the country. You wouldn’t want people to have to drive (or fly) 1000 miles to get to the nearest bar, would you? That’s not environmentally conscious.<\/p>\n

That said, most locals casinos will\u00a0not economically revive an\u00a0area. In fact, the opposite seems true. The casino is a black hole. Local restaurants and bars have a very tough time competing with the casino, which has gaming revenue allowing it to use predatory pricing on dining; that is, the casino can comp meals, which local restaurants can’t afford to do.<\/p>\n

Locals casinos are generally not destination resorts. Many of them have no real entertainment to speak of, an unimpressive hotel if any at all, and the bulk of the customer base is made up of\u00a0local day-trippers. What happens to the guy who lives five minutes from the new casino? He surely goes every night; what else is there to do? He loses all his money quickly. People who live 30 miles out last a little longer, because they visit perhaps only four days a week. But they, too, will be busted. The\u00a0casino’s event horizon is about 100 miles out. Within that radius, all money will be sucked into the casino, never to escape.<\/p>\n

What of the new jobs? Have you ever been to a gambling town where the dealers came from the local low-skilled workforce? They get a dealing job, but then blow their new income by gambling in their off hours. The casino black hole is such an efficient destroyer that revenue often slows after the first few years. This is attributed to economic conditions or competition, but sometimes it’s partially due to the fact that the casino already busted everyone within a 100-mile radius!<\/p>\n

If you really want the neighborhood to survive and thrive, you probably have to make sure that there are alternatives to casino entertainment, or even restrict gambling by the locals, or at least the casino employees themselves. The casinos in the Bahamas do not allow Bahamians to gamble. Those casinos are there to extract money from the foreign tourists!<\/p>\n

In the case of Cleveland, I believe that there are entertainment options in the downtown area other than the casino, so things might work out. But it’s still pathetic.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Horseshoe opened in Cleveland a couple years ago, I happened to be in the area for a wedding, and I couldn’t believe how excited these people were to get a casino! They were saying how they’d finally be a real city, and the TV news showed the people lining up on the street […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[503,504,241,502,505,281,214,499,119,147,501,500,189],"yoast_head":"\nLocal Casinos: Economic Revival, or Black Hole? - Gambling With An Edge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/local-casinos-economic-revival-or-black-hole\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Local Casinos: Economic Revival, or Black Hole? - Gambling With An Edge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When the Horseshoe opened in Cleveland a couple years ago, I happened to be in the area for a wedding, and I couldn’t believe how excited these people were to get a casino! 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