Taking chances on casinos - gaming casinos

American Demographics, May, 1997 by Kevin Huebsch

Gaming casinos are opening at a rapid rate. Although Americans' feelings about gambling are mixed, the number of people who visit casinos is growing rapidly. To keep this ball rolling, casinos are positioning themselves solidly in the mainstream, offering everything from roller-coaster rides to child care.

A siren sounds, lights flash, and a woman shrieks. A crowd gathers. There's been a killing. On a casino riverboat gliding down the Des Plaines River in Illinois, a woman has just won $5,000 from a 50-cent slot machine.

The rapid rise of legalized public gaming in the U.S. has created a rush to attract wagers, a scramble to collect taxes, and worries about possible resulting social ills. But there is nothing complicated here on board Harrah's Southern Star in Joliet, Illinois. A slot attendant hurries up to congratulate the stunned player, shut off the siren, and write out a jackpot request slip.

Recreational gambling is moving into the mainstream. Fifty-six percent of Americans gambled at least once in 1996, according to Roper Starch Worldwide Inc. of New York City. Casino games and state-run lotteries were the most popular gambles. For the majority who anted up, the wager was not dramatic. Six in ten lottery players report spending less than $10 per month on tickets in 1996, according to a CNN/USA Today survey by Gallup. But $1 scratch tickets and quarter slot tokens add up. Americans spent $44.4 billion on wagers in 1995, according to research by Christiansen/Cummings Associates, Inc. in International Gaming & Wagering Business magazine. That's more than three times the combined amount they spent on box-office movies and theme parks.

"Gambling is play in the simplest sense," says Bill Eadington, director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno. "But it deals with two fundamentals: chance and money." Those are no trifling matters.

Americans respect chance. Fifty-six percent say that chance plays a somewhat to very important role in how a person's life works out, according to the General Social Survey conducted by the Chicago-based National Opinion Research Center. At the same time, two-thirds agree that hard work is the most important reason why people get ahead. Mix these beliefs with the Protestant work ethic, stories of compulsive gamblers who win or lose everything, and a national history of successful wagers from western mining boomtowns to Wall Street, and simple play becomes complex controversy.

CHANGING ATTITUDES

U.S. attitudes toward gambling have never been simple. Our folklore is full of romantic risk-takers and errant gambling husbands. Lotteries, although popular in the 1800s, were banned in all states by the turn of the 20th century because of widespread fraud and corruption. In many people's minds, organized gambling became synonymous with organized crime.

But two changes in recent decades have improved the American public opinion of gambling. In 1964, New Hampshire introduced the first 20th-century public lottery in the U.S. Although lotteries may be controversial on ethical grounds, says Eadington, the New Hampshire lottery provided an example of "sanitized" gambling. Thirty-six states now sponsor lotteries. Casinos have capitalized on this public acceptance, cultivating an image as friendly and fun as a cross between a theme park and a shopping mall.

The second change follows on the first: increased exposure. Gambling has become less threatening to many people as gambling opportunities become more common. And gambling opportunities are becoming very common. A state lottery ticket and quart of milk can be purchased at the same convenience-store counter. Casino games, restricted to the Nevada desert prior to 1976, are available in downtown casinos, on riverboats, and on Indian reservations in 24 states.

The race to take your bet has already moved outside of casinos. Adults with a credit card and Internet access can wager on virtual casino games ("Can you think of anything better than your own private casino waiting for you at any time?" boasts one home page). Eight miles above the earth, airline passengers on some international non-U.S. flights can play seat-back video casino games for money.

Regardless of game, sponsor, or locale, a solid segment of the public still believes gambling is wrong. Twenty-seven percent of adults say gambling is immoral, according to a 1996 Gallup Organization poll, although the share is down from 32 percent in 1992. Older adults and Protestants are most likely to disapprove of gambling.

Gamblers, not surprisingly, have the most positive opinions about gambling. But nongamblers are not necessarily more likely than average to consider gambling immoral. Among people who did not gamble in the previous year, 25 percent say they didn't gamble because of moral or religious objections, according to a 1993 Roper survey. The reasons most people give for not gambling are that they don't want to spend the money (35 percent) and they don't have the money to spend (33 percent).