States add casinos, lure same patrons

Cash-starved states are increasingly being drawn to the lure of easy money in casinos - a bet that could ultimately hurt taxpayers if the supply of slot machines, poker tables and racetracks outpaces customers' demand.

The race to open new casinos is most frenzied in the Northeast, which has 41 casinos and 20 more planned.

Atlantic City, N.J., which for decades held a gambling monopoly outside Nevada, was already reeling from a beatdown inflicted by neighboring competitors. Now New York, which has casinos run by Indian tribes, just approved slot machines for its Aqueduct racetrack. Pennsylvania has added table games such as poker and blackjack to its nine slot-machine casinos - and five new casinos are planned.

New Hampshire has long debated whether to expand state gambling laws to allow slot machines, and a plan that would have allowed racetracks to become miniature casinos died this past legislative session. Massachusetts lawmakers approved plans July 31 for the state's first gambling halls, threatening two tribal casinos in Connecticut and two racetrack casinos in Rhode Island.

Maine's voters will decide a casino issue in November; Ohio just approved casinos; Maryland opens its first - along the busy Interstate 95 corridor - this fall; and Delaware's three racetrack casinos started offering table games this summer.

The consequences of saturation could be debilitating: Companies are investing billions of dollars chasing ever-smaller slices of the gambling pie while governments are banking on additional tax revenue from new casinos and gamblers' winnings to help run operations and ward off tax hikes.

States talk openly of poaching gamblers from their neighboring states and view keeping their own residents' money within state borders as something akin to a religious duty.

"Government wants free money, and the casino industry for years has represented and provided free money to them," said Tom Carver, executive director of New Jersey's Casino Reinvestment Development Authority. "The attraction is, 'Our citizens are going to a casino somewhere else and spending money that should stay within our borders, so we need our own casinos.' But people are running out of disposable income."

On the other side of the table, industry executives and some analysts say the Northeast's dense population makes it fertile ground for more casinos, with little risk of saturation.

The average gambler spends $108 at a casino visit - an amount roughly unchanged over 30 years, an American Gaming Association survey found. States tax gambling revenue at rates ranging from 6.75 percent in Nevada to 55 percent in Pennsylvania.

Relying too much on casinos can be risky. In 2006, New Jersey's 11 casinos forked over more than a half-billion dollars in state taxes. Last year, that dropped to $312 million and the state expects a further drop this year to about $275 million.

In Pennsylvania, an hour's drive from Atlantic City, casinos logged their best-ever month in July for gross slots revenue - $211.1 million, of which $116 million is state taxes. And that take doesn't reflect new table game revenues, yet unreported.

It's believed those table games that began play in July boosted the record month for slots, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board said.

Adding table games "really was a goal of the governor to keep the gambling dollars in the commonwealth," said Doug Harbach. Most of Pennsylvania's gamblers, he said, "had been pretty regular players in New Jersey, West Virginia, Delaware and New York."

Ron Reynolds, 68, a retired salesman and video poker fan from Philadelphia, used to go to Atlantic City two or three times a month. But since the PARX casino opened in Bensalem, Pa., just a minutes from his home, he visits a couple of times a week.

"I'll go through 50 or 60 dollars," each time, he said. Atlantic City sees him just once a month now, and he stays two nights in a free room. "I go to Atlantic City, I'll go through a couple hundred dollars a night." (next page »)