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Charities Losing to Casinos12 August 2002MASSACHUSETTS – As reported by the Boston Globe: "The ladies still gather Thursdays at the Nazzaro Center, daubers primed and tales from the neighborhood ready for the telling. But it's not what it once was. "'We've lost a lot of people,' said Rose Toscano, head of the Young Seniors weekly bingo game in Boston's North End. "In some cases, the departures were unavoidable: 'Death, Alzheimer's, and illness,' as Toscano put it. But other players have drifted away, lured by the flashier, more lucrative bingo games at Foxwoods Resort & Casino where payouts can reach $250,000. "Bingo, the Plain Jane of the gambling world, long the province of coffee-sipping grandmothers eager for sociability as much as prizes, is poised to disappear from churches, community centers, and schools. Across the country, charitable bingo games have suffered striking revenue declines, a result, observers say, of an aging playing population but more significantly, the draw of other gambling outlets. "…A database compiled by Christiansen Capital Advisors, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm that advises the gaming industry, showed that overall consumer spending on bingo nationally has not changed since 1982, but charitable game revenue has fallen from an estimated $1.13 billion in 1998 to $974 million in 2001. The trend reflects what the firm's chairman, Eugene Christiansen, described as a `massive shift out of charitable games and into Indian games.' "Here in Massachusetts, the number of licensed bingo games has declined by nearly half, going from 916 in 1984 to 479 in 2001. Meanwhile, annual attendance has plummeted from 10.4 million in 1984 to 3.7 million in 2001. "Bingo at Foxwoods, though, isn't lacking for players. Although Foxwoods opened the Connecticut casino in 1992, it has been running bingo games since 1986. "…State lottery sales in Massachusetts also recently logged record highs, reaching $4.2 billion in fiscal year 2002, an increase of 6.8 percent over the previous year. "Local bingo operators say they can't compete with the burgeoning gambling options, when their payouts are so much smaller. "…The struggle - and death - of bingo games has meant less money in church choir coffers and fewer instruments for school bands, the traditional beneficiaries of charitable bingo, which was legalized in Massachusetts in 1971. "But some say the price must also be measured by another factor: loss of community cohesion…" |