Well it ain’t a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer. It’s something a lot more magical that that. After facing three-plus long years of devastating hardship in the gaming economy, the fiery engines of American capitalism have done just what they are designed to do: Seek out a way to let growth and prosperity flourish. Ya just gotta love that invisible hand thing!
Harsh headwinds from anti-capitalist and anti-gaming forces have been able to place unreasonable barriers to the responsible expansion of gaming for decades. That is until now. Today, the very hardships we faced as an industry and as a country have called for a candid re-examination of the facts about gaming. Most states are feeling the pinch of the recession we’ve experienced over the last few years and are looking for solutions to improve their economic well-being. Raising state income taxes, corporate taxes and capital gains taxes is actually having a disastrous effect on state tax revenues. For those of you interested in why this works out the way it does, please look up the Laffer Curve.
Up until the last three years, most all states were financially solvent and were able to raise enormous tax revenues via the normal commerce that existed within their borders. The recession that began in mid-2008 was a game changer. Tax revenues for most states plummeted and paved the way for more realistic and pragmatic thinking about solutions. Gaming was an obvious solution once legislators looked past the dogma about gaming’s early days. That has been a difficult image to outgrow, and unfortunately it took a terrible economy to jar people to look past traditional and outdated beliefs about it.
It can’t be denied that gaming brings in tax revenues directly and indirectly wherever it is adopted. More importantly, in these tough economic times, it brings with it jobs and capital investment. The American public’s attitude about gaming has also matured. It no longer conjures up thoughts of organized crime and the mob. While gaming became squeaky clean many decades ago due to its licensing process, government oversight, compliance and strictly enforced regulations, it was not the first thing that came to mind of the general public. They were concerned about gaming’s entertainment factor.
While I can’t bring myself to be thankful for the difficult economy we’ve been experiencing, I can say I’m thankful that a new attitude about it has emerged as a result. This most severe recession has acted as a catalyst to realistic thinking for many state legislators and their constituents. Four years ago, seeing legal, regulated gaming opening up in Massachusetts, Texas, Florida or Hawaii would have been unthinkable. It’s not anymore, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are more states looking at legalizing casinos and other forms of gambling. Many states are even looking into legalizing sports betting. So far, I haven’t even added online poker into that equation, and the probability of full Internet gaming that’s not too far out on the horizon.
While gaming has witnessed respectable growth over the last 20 years, there is a tidal wave of positive change coming our way over the next five years and beyond. We need to keep in mind that this opportunity is nothing more than that—an opportunity. It’s critically important that new entrants into the world of gaming are provided full access to experts in the field who can guide and advise them the right way to go about tapping into the world of benefits gaming has to offer.
Peter E. Mead
Publisher,
Casino Enterprise Management
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