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I. Nelson Rose Gaming Guru  California tribes would get sports betting if they didn’t hate card clubs25 August 2022
By I. Nelson Rose The extremely rich and politically powerful gaming tribes in California are spending nearly half a billion dollars this year to win the right to have sports betting. Or, I should say, they are throwing away their money on a fatally flawed initiative, which the voters will reject in November. And it is the tribes’ own fault. Proposition 26, if approved, would authorize sports betting only in-person, and only at the state’s four privately owned racetracks and 66+ tribal casinos. It would also give tribes the right, for the first time, to offer roulette and craps. But it also has an unnecessary provision designed to hurt their most hated competitors, state-licensed cardclubs. California’s largest Indian casinos have 5,000 slot machines, each, making them among the most profitable in the world. The cardclubs have no slots or house-banked games. They are even expressly prohibited from offering “21.” But the tribes are furious that the clubs are offering “22,” making small changes in the rules for blackjack and throwing some jokers into the deck. Worse, the clubs got the State Legislature to allow games with a dealer-banker, usually an outside company with more than enough money to cover the bets of all the other players. The only limitation is the position must be offered to everyone at the table every third hand. The tribes claim that in practice, the clubs’ dealer-banker position does not actually rotate, making the games indistinguishable from casino banking games. So they sued, alleging unfair competition and public nuisance. California’s courts refused to hear their cases. Under California statutory law, suits for unfair competition and public nuisance can only be brought by “persons.” Tribes are sovereign governments. Corporations may be people. But the courts ruled that Indian tribe are not “persons.” So, in writing their initiative to give themselves an oligopoly on a multi-billion-dollar sports betting business in a state with a population greater than Canada, the tribes added a provision which would expressly allow tribes, or anyone else, to sue cardclubs for illegal gambling. Just defending the inevitable lawsuits would put the clubs out of business. And if they lost, they would be fined $10,000 per violation, which might apply to every hand dealt. Cardclubs could only come up with $41 million to oppose Prop. 26. Any one of a dozen gaming tribes could write a check for that amount. But if you use a bomb to kill a gnat; you might end up killing yourself. For the clubs have politically powerful allies. Many municipalities rely on their gaming clubs to more than balance their budgets. The club in the small city of Hawaiian Gardens in Los Angeles County supplies more than 60% of the city’s revenue. If the clubs close, small cities will die. Or at least they will have to lay off many government employees who belong to influential unions. And every local service organization that depends on city spending will also have to cut back. Prop. 26 would have had enough trouble passing without antagonizing cities and unions and local organizations. The nation’s largest online sportsbooks are spending $150 million on their own sports betting initiatives, Prop. 27, and in opposing the tribes’ Prop. 26. Prop. 27 will also probably fail. When faced with competing initiatives, voters often just say no to both. As for the tribes, the moral is: The cardclubs are merely your economic competitors, and weak ones at that. They’re not your enemies. Macau’s distressing new casino laws Part I26 July 2022
Macau’s casino operators were just reminded, dramatically, that China is still a Marxist country. First, the People’s Republic of China became the only major nation to seek the complete eradication of Covid. The PRC has the will and power to do whatever it thinks it will take: quarantining entire cities, ... (read more)
COVID devastates Macau casinos21 July 2022
You know you are in deep trouble when one of the leading newsletters in your industry discusses the “silver lining” in being shut down: “Macau Casino Closures Provide Some Relief from Cash Burn.” Asia Gaming Brief Macau casinos have so few gamblers, in fact, so little revenue of any kind, that the government finally ordering them completely closed is a small blessing. ... (read more)
Is a New York City casino license worth $1 billion?20 April 2022
No government has ever asked $1 billion just for the right to build a casino. That still is true. But that’s how much New York Governor Kathy Hochul had originally wanted for casinos in New York City. Casino executives and lobbyists were able to get the leaders of the State Legislature to put pressure on the Governor. ... (read more)
What should daily fantasy sports do now?The two big daily fantasy sports (DFS) operators, FanDuel and DraftKings, and their backers are, in the immortal words of former President George H.W. Bush, in "deep-doodoo." But lawyers with legal shovels can probably dig them out.Gambling and the Law: Are daily fantasy sports legal?Technology is speeding up changes in the world of gaming. It took almost two centuries for poker to evolve from Straight Poker – five paper cards dealt face down with no draw – to Internet Hold ‘Em linking players using computers in different states and even on different continents. Decades passed before ... (read more)Gambling and the Law: Culture clashIt is not easy to do business in Asia. Or in the U.S.This is especially true of heavily regulated businesses, like legal gaming. And the problems are compounded when an individual who is a product of one culture wants to expand into a foreign market.Sometimes, the barriers are structural. How, for example, ... (read more)Gambling and the Law: Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid!Opponents of legal gambling are notorious within the industry for making up numbers. Robert Goodman, for example, is a discredited "anti" and the founder of the grandly named, though now defunct, "United States Gambling Research Institute." He is infamous for proclaiming, "The American Insurance ... (read more)Gambling and the Law: 'Blackjack and the Law' wins case for casinoIn one of the very first cases heard by the federal court in Las Vegas in 2011, Harrah’s (now renamed Caesars) once again won the right to kick out card-counters. Roger L. Hunt, Chief U.S. District Judge for Nevada, based his decision, in part, on a book I co-authored in 1998, BLACKJACK AND THE ... (read more)I. Nelson Rose |
I. Nelson Rose |
