Автор: genom

New York City residents are not eager to have a full-scale casino in the five boroughs. And if new casinos are built upstate, most city residents say they would not be interested in visiting.But a majority of city voters support a ballot measure to allow as many as seven casinos in New York State, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.

The finding is good news for supporters of expanded gambling in the state, including Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. New York City is home to about 40 percent of the state’s registered voters, and Election Day turnout in the city is expected to be higher than in many other parts of the state because of the race for mayor, so support for the casino measure in the city would greatly increase the odds of passage statewide.

Debate over the measure, which would amend the State Constitution, has been muted: A coalition of casino supporters, financed by about $3 million primarily donated by gambling interests, has begun airing television commercials in the city and on Long Island. There is little organized opposition.

The poll quoted the Nov. 5 ballot language, which lists only positive arguments for allowing casinos, such as promoting job growth and increasing education funding. After hearing that language, six in 10 likely voters said they would vote yes.

“That is a strong margin of victory for the gambling amendment,” said Steven A. Greenberg, a Siena College pollster. “If support is 60 percent in New York City, I am hard pressed to see how it could fail statewide.”

City residents, however, were less enthusiastic about opening a full-scale casino in the city, with 42 percent in favor and 50 percent opposed.

New York already has five full-scale casinos run by Indian tribes and nine slot machine parlors at racetracks. Mr. Cuomo and lawmakers have agreed that if the ballot measure passes, they would allow only four casinos at first, and all of them would be upstate.

In the new poll, New York City residents said they expected both positive and negative effects from expanded casino gambling.

Seven in 10 said they thought it was quite likely that the casinos would bring in significant new revenue for government.

“Just in my apartment building alone, twice a month they have buses come and take people to Atlantic City,” Albert Perrotto, 55, from Far Rockaway, Queens, said in a follow-up interview. “If they take them to upstate New York instead, it would be a shorter ride, and people would go upstate, and the revenue would come here instead. It makes a lot of sense to me.”

At the same time, six in 10 city residents said they thought it was most likely that new casinos would increase societal problems such as crime and compulsive gambling.

Quin Stratton, 23, who works for a credit-card processing center and lives in the Bronx, said she supported the amendment but would not want to see a full-scale casino developed in New York City. “If it’s in the city, it will attract people who don’t have a lot of money, and they will blow their whole paycheck,” she said.

“If the casinos are upstate, or far away, it’s harder,” Ms. Stratton added. “They would have to actually get into a car and would have to make that decision. If it’s in the city, then someone who gets off work will walk by and say, ‘Hey it’s a casino!’ and blow everything they just made.”

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has promoted the casino measure as an economic boon to struggling upstate regions and has predicted that tourists could be lured beyond New York City by the new casinos. But city residents in the poll expressed little interest in traveling upstate to visit a gambling destination. Only about one-third of city residents said they would be likely to visit one of the new casinos, and two-thirds said it was unlikely they would do so.

The citywide poll was conducted on landlines and cellphones from Oct. 21 to 26 with 1,215 adults, including 701 likely voters. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for all adults and four percentage points for likely voters.

clik

“No to More Casinos in New York State” (editorial, Oct. 25) holds casinos responsible for a range of ills. To the contrary, casinos are a part of the mainstream entertainment industry, and they are supporting local businesses, paying higher average wages than similar businesses and helping communities grow. This is why communities continue to embrace gambling, and why today commercial casinos can be found in 23 states.

We take issue with the editorial’s portrayal of our industry. From Bethlehem, Pa., to Kansas City, Mo., and from the Gulf Coast to the Midwest, casinos are valued as community partners and thriving economic engines. That is the reality of what’s taking place across the country, and it’s a role we’re proud to play.

clik

In the 48 states that permit at least some form of commercial gambling, lively debate continues over the industry’s relentless efforts to expand. On Tuesday, New Yorkers will vote on a proposed constitutional amendment that would permit up to seven new full-scale gambling casinos in the state. (The state’s five existing casinos are confined to Indian reservations.)

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo argues that the amendment would create jobs, increase school aid and lower property taxes. And, yes, it would do all those things. But it’s still a bad idea. Other strategies would accomplish the same goals more effectively, without the disastrous spillovers that invariably accompany expanded gambling.

The ostensible attraction of the amendment is its promise to relieve budget woes without new taxes. In proponents’ eyes, state income from gambling is a form of voluntary tax payment. But modern casino revenue comes mostly from slot machines, and the relationship between them and some of their patrons is voluntary in only the most superficial sense. “Addiction by Design” (Princeton University Press, 2012), Natasha Dow Schüll’s gripping account of slot machine gambling in Las Vegas, looks into the technical wizardry underlying modern slots and their effects on players. According to slot designers and casino managers surveyed in the book, the mission of these machines is simple: to separate patrons from their money in the most ruthlessly efficient — yet psychologically agreeable — ways possible.

The machines create an experience so compelling that some people stop playing only when they’ve exhausted every available resource. Ms. Schüll, a cultural anthropologist on the M.I.T. faculty, interviews a slots player who sees the machines as so immersive that winning becomes a distraction, something that matters only because it lets her play a little longer. “It’s like being in the eye of a storm,” the woman says, later adding, “You aren’t really there — you’re with the machine and that’s all you’re with.”

Psychologists describe this state as flow, a feeling of being so absorbed in what you’re doing that you become completely unaware of the passage of time. Artists, writers and others who achieve flow in their work call it one of the most pleasurable psychological states, one that greatly enhances productivity. But in hindsight, at least, flow as experienced by some slots players is a state that leads to ruin.

If casino gambling were expanded, most New Yorkers wouldn’t be directly affected. Even in places that already have it, only a small proportion of people become problem gamblers. But much the same could be said of crack cocaine. If it were legal, most people wouldn’t even use it, much less become addicted to it. But in both cases, the number who would become addicted, though small in proportional terms, would be disturbing. If governments shouldn’t raise revenue by sharing revenue with sellers of crack cocaine, why should they enter similar pacts with casino operators?

A 2004 study of legalized casino gambling in Ontario estimated that about one-third of casino revenue came from patrons with significant gambling problems. Libertarians contend that if gambling addicts freely choose to waste their own money, that is none of society’s business. But addiction also harms the innocent, making marriages more fragile and bankruptcies more likely. Properly accounting for these spillovers exposes casino expansion as not only an inhumane policy, but one that could actually reduce state revenue.

Historically, societies have tried to shield their most vulnerable members from dangerous temptations, including many forms of gambling and addictive drugs. Discreet private gambling and soft drug use are seldom targets of these prohibitions. But active revenue sharing with casino operators crosses a bright line. It lends the state’s imprimatur to activities that ruin lives. Governments have been properly reluctant to take this step.

As parents tell their children, the best way to get ahead is to get more education, work hard and save for the future. For many years, however, New York has encouraged its citizens to rely instead on luck, to dream about what they’d do if they won the state lottery. “I’d buy the company and fire my boss,” intoned one artfully produced, state-funded television spot.

New York does need more revenue. And though no one relishes higher taxes in the abstract, there are many things we should be taxing but aren’t. When we buy heavier vehicles, for example, we put others at more risk. If vehicles were taxed by weight, we’d have an incentive to consider that risk when buying. Companies may emit pollution not because they want to ignore the environment, but because cleaner processes are expensive. If we taxed pollution, businesses would emit less of it. Instead of promoting gambling, the governor should explain that the state should be taxing activities that cause more harm than good, even if we didn’t need the revenue.

Politicians naturally fear taking unpopular positions. But voters are sometimes willing to cut them some slack. Mr. Cuomo might reflect on the repeated vetoes of death penalty laws by his father, Mario M. Cuomo, when he was governor in the 1980s and ’90s. The death penalty was extremely popular at the time, yet voters sensed that the vetoes sprang from sincere conviction, and they were quick to forgive him.

Voters might be similarly tolerant if the current Governor Cuomo advocated more principled methods of generating new state revenue. He’ll be more motivated to do so if voters reject an amendment that’s sure to increase addiction by design.

clik

BOSTON — Suffolk Downs, a famed but fading thoroughbred racetrack in the neighborhood of East Boston, had dreams of a major revitalization, and when the state approved casinos in 2011, it partnered with the Caesars Entertainment Corporation to apply for the sole casino license that would be awarded in the greater Boston. They planned a $1 billion destination resort casino that would be one of the biggest in the Western Hemisphere, a curved, glassy mega-palace that might look more at home in Miami Beach than in this gritty neighborhood hard by Logan International Airport.

Suffolk Downs needed voter approval before it could advance to the next stage for the license and invested more than $2 million in a campaign for a yes vote on a referendum on Tuesday’s ballot.

But in mid-October, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, reputed to be one of the toughest in the country, pulled the plug on Caesars, saying it was unsuitable for doing business in the state. Suffolk Downs asked Caesars to withdraw, and it did.

Now, Suffolk Downs is suddenly scrambling to find a new partner. And the election is going ahead because the ballots have already been printed — with Caesars’ name on them.

Suffolk Downs says Caesars’ exit does not change anything as far as voters go. But opponents say that it changes everything and that it is absurd for voters to be passing judgment on something that does not exist.

“At a certain point, you can’t cancel a vote,” said Pamela Wilmot, the executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, a watchdog group, which has not taken a position on the casino. “But this throws the whole thing into doubt, with voters not really knowing what they’re voting for.”

If the referendum passes, she said, opponents will probably challenge it in court. “Voter intent will be difficult to ascertain, given the situation,” she said.

As confusing as this might be for voters, Suffolk needs their approval before it can compete against two potent rivals that are also seeking the license for a casino to be built in the untapped, lucrative Eastern Massachusetts market. At stake is billions of dollars in anticipated revenue, some of which will be shared with the host community and the state.

One rival is Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas casino mogul and chief executive of Wynn Resorts Ltd., who has proposed a $1.2 billion resort casino on the Mystic River waterfront, a few miles west in the town of Everett. Residents there have approved his project with 86.5 percent of the vote.

Another competitor is Foxwoods, which is planning a $1 billion casino in the suburban town of Milford, about 40 miles southwest of Boston. Milford will vote on the Foxwoods plan on Nov. 19.

Once they have local approval, the casinos must submit their final applications to the state by Dec. 31. The gambling commission is to award the license by spring.

Suffolk Downs was believed to have the edge because of its strong political backing, most notably from Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston. The track, where the Beatles played in 1966, is also a sentimental favorite since it has been here almost 80 years. Pro-casino organizers are trading on that nostalgic connection: their green and yellow signs say “Vote ‘yes’ for Suffolk Downs.” In tiny letters is the Caesars logo, but the word “casino” does not appear.

But the gambling commission threw cold water on Caesars’ participation. In a lengthy report, it cited Caesars’ $24 billion debt, alleged ties of an associate to organized crime in Russia and a scandal involving a high-roller named Terrance Watanabe, who racked up millions of dollars in unpaid debt at Caesars casinos and in turn claimed that the company encouraged him to gamble while he was intoxicated.

Suffolk Downs officials said they were blindsided by the report. Caesars said it was equally surprised. On its way out, the company, which operates more than 50 other casinos across the world, said the Massachusetts standards for suitability were “arbitrary, unreasonable and inconsistent with those that exist in every other gaming jurisdiction.”

The commission did deem Suffolk Downs suitable for a casino. As track officials seek a new partner, they have sought to minimize any sense of disruption. Chip Tuttle, the chief operating officer of Suffolk Downs, said the ballot referendum was merely a land use question for voters. He said the track would acquire a new partner quickly and hold it to the same standards agreed to by Caesars.

clik

New Jersey began allowing Internet gambling on Tuesday in a much-watched bet that there are untapped sources of revenue on bedside iPads and cubicle desktops, and even among people checking their phones while they wait in line for coffee.Gambling analysts say it is the most significant development since casinos opened in Atlantic City over three decades ago, ultimately setting off what became a furious competition among states for a share of the take.

Eight other states have legislation pending that would allow Internet gambling. Delaware and Nevada began offering some online gambling this year. But New Jersey is considered the first true test case because it allows a full range of casino games — not just poker — and its much larger population offers the scale to see whether online gambling can meet the bold predictions for revenue and tap into a younger, more web-dependent demographic without stealing customers from struggling casinos.

Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, who signed the legislation allowing Internet gambling this year, is counting on that gambling to generate $1 billion for the state’s casinos in its first year, bringing in $150 million in tax revenue to help balance the state budget.

Ratings agencies and gambling industry analysts said that estimate was hugely inflated; one forecaster, H2 Gambling Capital, predicted that online gambling will produce about $300 million for New Jersey casinos — or about $45 million in tax revenue.

But H2 Gambling Capital estimated that the market in the United States could be worth about $9 billion in the next five years, particularly if large states such as California that are now considering online gambling begin to allow it.

Analysts are watching to see not just whether New Jersey can make money, but also whether new technology can guarantee that bets are placed only within state lines and by people older than 21, as the legislation requires. They are also watching whether, as some fear, the online expansion will put gambling addiction a mere click away.

The official debut on Tuesday was only the beginning of what promises to be a political fight. Legislators are already pushing to allow international companies to operate in New Jersey; the current law allows Internet gambling only through a limited number of casinos.

On the other side, Sheldon Adelson, one of the largest casino operators in the world and a major Republican donor, has pledged to fight state and federal laws that would allow more Internet gambling — a stance that is bucking most of the industry.

“The Internet is the next frontier not just for gaming but for every industry,” said Geoff Freeman, the president of the American Gaming Association. “You can look at industries that have seized the potential of the Internet to leverage and grow their business. Then there are those companies like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video who tried to force people to consume their products how they wanted us to consume them, and went out of business.

“As an industry, the question is how do we get out ahead of this.”

Executives at online gambling companies argue that it exists illegally already and may as well be tapped for profit and tax revenues, and regulated to protect players.

Worldwide, online gambling is now a $33 billion market, and $3 billion of that comes from illegal bets placed in the United States, according to the gaming association.

“It’s a new era of using the technology to meet what regulators are concerned about, to protect our children and our data,” said Tobin Prior, chief executive of Ultimate Gaming, which is operating games through Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City.

Gambling online was largely accepted in the United States from the late 1990s until 2006, when Congress passed a law that made it illegal for gambling companies to accept bets online for “unlawful” transactions. Many companies left the market, leaving less well-regulated operators that in several cases turned out to be laundering money.

In early 2011, the Justice Department indicted the heads of three companies operating online poker in the United States. But later that year, the department issued a ruling saying that only sports bets were unlawful. States, already in a fierce competition for casino customers, moved quickly to take advantage of the new market.

The legislation signed by Mr. Christie was a lifeline to Atlantic City casinos, which have been losing customers to new casinos in New York and Pennsylvania. Under the law, online gambling companies have to operate through the casinos.

Seven casinos were approved for a “soft launch” that began last week, with a trial offered to invited guests. State gaming officials said they were surprised at how many people accepted those offers — about 10,000. Six casinos — all but the Golden Nugget — were approved for wider play starting on Tuesday..

The state and the casinos sent testers outside the state to test technology that is supposed to guarantee that bets come only from within New Jersey. None of those testers succeeded in breaking through, though casinos said some others did. Other gamblers in New Jersey tried to get onto the sites but could not. And some banks and credit card companies blocked customers from getting access.

“It’s taking a bit of time for these guys who exited in 2006 to be reassured that the players who are here now are bona fide,” said Brian Mattingley, chief executive of 888.com, which operates in all three states that offer online gambling.

David Rebuck, director of the State Division of Gaming Enforcement, said most of the bets during the trial period had been placed on computers, not mobile devices, and had been concentrated where the state expected, in cities in the northern part of the state, such as Hoboken, with its sizable population of people in their 20s and 30s. “We were inundated with people trying to get in,” he said.

clik

MADRID — Sheldon G. Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate, on Friday abandoned his plans to build a $30 billion gambling and leisure resort on the outskirts of Madrid after failing to win financial concessions and other favors from the Spanish government.

The decision by Mr. Adelson’s company, Las Vegas Sands, to drop its EuroVegas resort project is an economic blow not just for Madrid but for Spain as a whole. The country has been pining for foreign investment to help revive its economy and cut its 26 percent unemployment rate.

Although Spain recently emerged from a two-year recession, it remains mired in stagnation, deeply troubled by low consumer spending and a domestic credit squeeze that lingers from the country’s housing bust and the subsequent banking bailout in 2012.

But while Mr. Adelson was openly welcomed by the government, several Spanish civic and religious groups, opposed to gambling, sought to block the EuroVegas project. Some critics warned the authorities against bending Spanish legislation to suit Mr. Adelson, by granting him special tax benefits as well as accepting his request to exempt EuroVegas from a nationwide ban on smoking in public spaces.

Political opponents of the governing Popular Party also argued against granting Sands any tax concessions.

With an estimated net worth of $28.5 billion, the 80-year-old Mr. Adelson is one of the richest men in the world. The bulk of his wealth comes from the extravagant casino resorts he has developed in Las Vegas, the Venetian and the Palazzo; several built or redeveloped more recently in Macao, a former Portuguese colony that is now part of China; and one in Singapore.

Mr. Adelson, long a supporter of conservative causes, has been an active player in American politics. In the 2012 presidential election, he donated more than $60 million to his preferred candidates, first Newt Gingrich and then Mitt Romney, a sum that made him the single largest financial contributor in a presidential race.

In a statement on Friday, Sands said that it had dropped the Madrid project after an extensive review and that it would instead pursue alternative investment opportunities in Asia. It did not detail the review’s conclusions.

“Developing integrated resorts in Europe has been a vision of mine for years,” Mr. Adelson said in the statement, “but there is a time and place for everything, and right now our focus is on encouraging Asian countries, like Japan and Korea, to dramatically enhance their tourism offering through the development of integrated resorts there.”

Mr. Adelson’s investments, dependent as they are on securing regulatory approval from states and foreign governments, have frequently courted controversy. Earlier this year, Mr. Adelson’s company, Las Vegas Sands, disclosed in a regulatory filing that it might have breached a federal law prohibiting bribery of foreign officials.

For some time now, Mr. Adelson’s business activities and investment plans in China have been closely scrutinized, including payments Sands made via a separate Chinese company. In 2010, his company was sued by a former employee who claimed he had been forced to impose improper pressure on Chinese government officials.

Macau, the gambling mecca in China, has become the main driver of Mr. Adelson’s wealth. Analysts say that overall gambling revenue in Macau was $38 billion last year — close to 90 percent of its economy — compared to about $6 billion in Las Vegas.

In Europe, casino gambling has been relatively limited; the Monte Carlo casinos in Monaco, the largest on the Continent, generate about $230 million in gambling revenue. Mr. Adelson, who announced his plans to bring a megaresort to the Continent in 2009, would have overwhelmed that.

While there were rumors from time to time that Mr. Adelson might be tempted if the Greek government were prepared to essentially let him take over an island in the Aegean, it appears that from the start he seriously considered only Spain for the immense project.

In September 2012, after a lengthy competition between Spain’s two largest cities, Sands chose Madrid for EuroVegas rather than Barcelona. At the time, Mr. Adelson’s choice was seen not only as a fillip for Madrid’s regional economy but also as a sign that foreign investors were ready to return to Spain. Underlining the importance of such a project for the country, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy met three times with Mr. Adelson to discuss his EuroVegas plans.

The project had already run into delays, as Sands originally planned to start construction of EuroVegas in mid-2013 and complete the complex within 10 years.

Mr. Adelson’s U-turn came after Mr. Rajoy’s government reviewed his request for the smoking exemption, as well as his financial demands. According to Spanish officials, those included an insistence that the government guarantee financial compensation for any changes in the country’s gambling laws that could hurt EuroVegas and grant EuroVegas a special rate on the gambling tax. Spain’s review also included discussions with the European Commission to determine whether making such concessions would violate European antitrust rules.

Sands proposed EuroVegas as a giant resort that would operate 12 hotels with a total of 36,000 rooms, six casinos with 18,000 slot machines, and three golf courses. But Sands remained evasive about how it would finance the project, saying last year that its own contribution would be 25 to 35 percent of the equity of EuroVegas and that it would look for “financing options from the capital markets” to cover the rest of the cost.

Politicians in opposition parties warned Mr. Rajoy and Madrid’s regional government, which is also in the hands of the conservative Popular Party, against providing any special fiscal or regulatory treatment for EuroVegas.

Tomás Gómez, the Socialist party’s regional leader in Madrid, said last year that even though EuroVegas would help his city, the Socialists would work to ensure that the law was the same for everybody.

Spain under the rule of Mr. Rajoy has taken aggressive steps in hard-hit Southern Europe to ease the path for foreign investors, especially in the automotive industry, where exports have played an important part in the country’s tepid economic recovery.

clik