Lies, damned lies and smoking

Although Illinois‘ casino industry has fallen and can’t get up, the state’s smoking ban has nothing to do with it. Nada! That’s the contention of a study out of Washington University (my brother’s alma mater), which says that players “never left.” Nope, they’re still there, just playing a lot less — or so runs the line of reasoning laid out in the study. Funded by Missouri Group Against Smoking Pollution (MGASP), the research project compared factors such as building permits and casino admissions in Illinois against those in Missouri, Iowa and Indiana (possibly also Wisconsin, although property data is closely guarded by tribal casinos).

The conclusion? “When economic conditions were accounted for, casino admissions in Illinois did not decline significantly relative to neighboring states, nor did admissions increase in neighboring states. Reductions reported in Illinois casinos are therefore not due to patrons leaving Illinois casinos for neighboring states where they could smoke.”

So picture, if you will, a bunch of smoke-free Illinois casinos filled with unhappy, penurious gamblers. That’s what the Wash U./MGASP crew would have us believe. As reported in Tobacco Control, they contend Illinois was an anomaly, an economic Black Hole of Calcutta whose casino revenues didn’t migrate whatsoever but duly stayed within state lines and went up in smoke, so to speak.

These views are not shared by the Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting & Accountability, which tracked the state’s casino revenues and found grievous declines in fiscal years 2008 (-7.5%) and ’09 (a whopping 18%) … at a time when Iowa, Indiana and Missouri were either flat or on the upswing.

Since MGASP discounts the smoking ban and the commission blames it, I wonder how either would account for the statistical anomaly that is Jumer’s Rock Island (left), which has posted exponential revenue increases in both revenue and admissions in 2009-10 — even as every other riverboat in the Land of Lincoln has shown a decline (save for a 2% traffic increase aboard Harrah’s Metropolis and a similar one for Penn National Gaming‘s Alton Belle).

Whatever the case, I doubt that state Rep. Lou Lang (D) will be brandishing MGASP’s study, with its dire image of the Illinois’ citizens discretionary income, as an argument in favor of gaming expansion. Speaking of which …

Horsey threat. A couple of slides toward the end of the Accountability Commission’s presentation (available as a PDF) paint a dramatic picture. Four tracks that would be eligible for racino status form a northwest-to-southeast barrier between Chicago proper and five suburban riverboat casinos. Two tracks sit within a 10-mile radius of Neil Bluhm‘s new Des Plaines casino. It’s enough to make a gaming operator queasy and the commission is pretty clear in its conclusion that racino legalization is mainly a prop for the wobbly fetlocks of the horseracing industry.

Illinois is a wonderful place. (I used to live there.) Just don’t build a casino in it.