I. INTRODUCTION: BIG AND GETTING BIGGER (& "FAMILY"ENTERTAINMENT)
"Gambling is now bigger than baseball, more powerful than a platoon of Schwarzeneggers, Spielbergs, Madonnas and Oprahs. More Americans went to casinos than to major league ballparks in 1993. Ninety-two million visits!" (The New York Times Magazine, July 17, 1994) and "Nevada's major hotel-casinos grossed $12 billion in fiscal 1995 and reported annual net, pre-federal tax profits of $1.28 billion....In the previous fiscal year the clubs took in $11 billion and had a pre-tax profit of $1.2 billion...." (Reno Gazette-Journal, February 5, 1996, page 4F)
II. PERSPECTIVES: DEVELOPMENT OVER TIME
Nevada legalized "gambling" in 1931 and it wasn't until 1978 that NewJersey legalized gambling in Atlantic City. After 1978, gamblingaccelerated at an incredible pace and it is a big business, withstaggering dollar amounts: on a typical day in the mid-1990s,consumers spent $627,213 every minute of every day on all types ofcommercial "gambling" in the USA and all of these commercial "gaming"ventures combined made a profit of $56,970 per minute! If you wish,you can legally gamble (or be "entertained") in 48 of the 50 statesand only Hawai'i and Utah have no legal gambling activities. You can:(a) go to 10 states that have either land-based or riverboat casinos;(b) participate in state-sanctioned lotteries in 36 states and theDistrict of Columbia (including multiple state lotteries); (c) go tonumerous local card rooms; (d) or go to 20 states that have some sortof Indian Nation gambling. (Some 150 tribes have signed, or arenegotiating, casino compacts with states for forms of gambling. Thenearest location for us is in Colusa.) A recent addition to gamblingcomes via Cyberspace and as an article in The San FranciscoChronicle of March 30, 1996 pointed out: "A year ago, gamblingand the Net were almost total strangers. Today, their cyberspacemarriage has resulted in more than 200 gambling-related sites" (pageA5).
III. GROWTH: CHANGES IN ATTITUDES+
"The casino entertainment industry has experienced an unprecedented surge in revenue growth in the past five years that outpaces nearly all other industry groups. Since 1990, casino revenues have doubled and now exceed $16.5 billion. The growth is driven by expansion of traditional land-based casino destinations and the continued development of new riverboat and Indian reservation casinos throughout the United States" (P. Satre, 1995, Harrah's Survey of Casino Entertainment, page 4).
In my anthropological opinion, four events contribute to today'sdevelopment of gambling in the USA: (a) State lotteries, beginning inNew Hampshire in 1964 (coupled with an economic recession); (b) theentrance of the Holiday Inn Corporation into gaming in 1978; (c) thepassage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) by the US Congressin 1988; (d) and human nature. Indian Nation Casino activities havebeen called the "new Buffalo" and the small Indian casino isvirtually a thing of the past. Gambling, called "entertainment" bysome, has made the transformation from being a vice to a major (andgrowing) industry. Satre, an executive with a publicly-traded company(Promus) that has 15 casinos in 8 states (and has expanded to NewZealand), wrote about the industry in 1993: "Socialization,entertainment and winning are the three major reasons why people gameat casinos (page 11)." In my own opinion, however, individuals notonly go for gambling but they also go to try and win and because theywish to be "a somebody." In 1995, an estimated 30,000,000 peoplevisited Las Vegas and in February 1996, eight Nevada gaming companies"donated $200,000 to help attack problem gambling, an illness thataffects 2 to 5 percent of the adult population" (Reno GazetteJournal, February 6, 1996, page 3E). [2]
IV. TEMPORARY CONCLUSIONS: IS IT "GAMBLING OR GAMING"?
We appear to have evolved into a species which believes in therelationship between gambling and guests: if you build it, they willcome and the proliferation of new gambling locations is amazing. Apoignant statement was made in 1994 by Andersen on January 10, 1994,in Time magazine (page 51): "It is now acceptable for thewhole family to come along to Las Vegas that's because the valuesof America have changed, not those of Las Vegas [STRESSadded]." Please note that Urbanowicz believes in the words ofSteve Wynn, Chairman of Mirage Resorts Inc., and responsible for theMirage, Treasure Island, and Bellagio (to open in 1998) in Las Vegas:"If you wanna make money in a casino, own one" but there are stillproblems with this as well! Harrah's established itself in NewZealand but a 1995 venture into New Orleans, by a unit of Harrah's(Harrah's Jazz Co.), failed:
"There is no shortage of reasons why Harrah's Jazz Co., the partnership that was formed to develop and $855 million land-based casino in New Orleans was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in late November [1995]. But some are more relevant to the overall casino industry than others. Chief among them is whether casinos are really meant to succeed in cities that are already well-positioned in the minds of tourists and locals as something other than a gaming destination." (Charles Anderer, 1996, "What New Orleans Tells Us" in International Gaming & Wagering Business, Vol. 17, No. 1, page 6.)
A similar refrain appeared in The Sacramento Bee of February4, 1996, where (in a "Special Report" on Gambling in California, onecould read: "Counting on economic windfall for community is asucker's bet, critics say" (page A12). Problems are also appearing inIndian Nation ventures, as the following from Rick Hill pointsout:
"In retrospect, 1995 was the Post-Cabazon year we all knew was coming. It was year number one of the increasing backlash that poses a serious threat to the success of Indian gaming, tribal autonomy and economic growth of tribes." (Indian Gaming, January 1996, Vol. 6, No. 1, page 5)
Nevertheless, gambling on the gaming industry appears to intereststockholders. On March 4, 1996, a survey of 417 companies waspublished in Fortune (Vol. 133, No. 4: 90-98) and based on"eight attributes of reputation" analyzed, Fortune listed two casinofirms among the top twenty "most admired" US companies: Mirage ranked#8 and The Promus Companies, Harrah's parent organization, ranked#18. Please note that (a) Mirage was not even listed last year, (b)Mirage Resorts was ranked #1 in the category of "Quality of Productsof Services" and (c) Coca-Cola (which was ranked #3) last year is nowthe #1 "admired" company in America! What impact will computers andCyberspace have on the current industry? Individuals are looking atcreating "computer slots" to make an interactive video game to wageron! ["Casino Data Is Spinning A New Line Of Slot Machines" inThe Wall Street Journal, February 6, 1996] and computertechnology is being introduced which will allow casinos "to trackgames and players--right down to the cards played and the amountsbet" (Reno Gazette-Journal, March 28, 1996, page 3C); finally,the potential of Cyberspace has yet to be realized: "Gaming machinesneed to be more fun and more interactive" were the words from arecent "Gaming Business Exposition" (Reno Gazette-Journal,March 26, 1996, page 4E). There are, however, definite problems whengambling is considered as gaming, as a 1995 series of articles in theMinneapolis Star Tribune pointed out (and condensed in theApril 1996 Reader's Digest as "Gambling's Toll in Minnesota:When A State Legalizes Gambling, Everybody Pays." In addition tonumerous tragic details of the effects of "gambling" one reads that"for Minnesota the social costs of gambling are emerging in vivid andtragic detail" (page 105). Individuals should ponder these words andgamble on the future: the game is developing as you read thesewords!
V. A FEW SELECTED REFERENCES: IN ADDITION TO THOSE CITEDABOVE
Eadington, W. 1992, Recent National Trends in the Casino GamingIndustry and their implications for the Economy of Nevada (Reno:University of Nevada).
Hill, R. 1994., The Future of Indian Gaming. Cultural SurvivalQuarterly, Vol. 17, No. 4: page 61.
Johnston, David, 1992, Temples of Chance: How America Inc. BoughtOut Murder Inc. to Win Control of the Casino Business(Doubleday)
Nickerson, N.P. 1995, Tourism and Gambling Content Analysis.Annals of Tourism Research, 22, 1: 53-66.
Norricks, J, 1984, The Poker Story: An American Subculture. TheUniversity Journal, CSU, Chico, Vol. 24: 29-31.
Smith, J, 1995, Running Scared: The Life And Treacherous Times ofLas Vegas King Steve Wynn (New York).
Spanier, D. 1992., Welcome To The Pleasuredome: Inside LasVegas (University of Nevada Press).