Another casino would be a mistake: Perkins
The answer? Put sportsbooks in existing casinos and racetracks, peel a little off the top for the landlords and a bit more to fund Canada’s Olympians and then stand back and count all the money.
A thought arrived, while trying to comprehend the continuing official debate in Toronto over where, if anywhere, to locate a casino.
Why even bother? Casinos are a dime a dozen. One more in Ontario — up to 29 more if the Ontario Lottery and Gaming’s “modernization” madness is allowed to steamroll common sense — is no big deal.
The World Casino Directory lists 68 casinos in Canada, including 13 in Ontario. The United States, at last count, has 1,511. Where’s the uniqueness? Where’s the lure to tourists when practically every American already has a casino nearby?
Depending where you live in the GTA, you’re 90 minutes, tops, from Rama or Niagara Falls if you feel the lure of the green felt. Stick one in downtown Toronto and what happens to business — and jobs — at those houses?
Despite claims a casino is a cash cow, many of them lose money, including Ontario’s. (OLG documents show resort casinos losing some $90 million in one year.) The smoking ban and stupid little things like forcing players to interrupt games to pay for drinks help keep U.S. gamblers on their own side of the border.
Caesar’s, which owns 10 Las Vegas casinos and 50 continent-wide, posted a fourth-quarter loss of some $500 million and recently issued $1.5 billion in new debt. MGM, another busy operator whose representatives seem to escort OLG head Paul Godfrey to press conferences, has a history that causes shudders.
Do a little Internet digging and look at the way it went about trying to get into business with the notorious Stanley Ho and his daughter Pansy in Macau. Google the words “New Jersey special report Pansy Ho Macau” and pull up a chair. Read it and then say you want to do business with this company.
Locally, politicians have the debate framed for them by paid lobbyists working for casino companies who are so honest they do things like run phantom “job fairs” for positions that don’t actually exist.
A week ago, a binding motion from the Conservatives at Queen’s Park directed Ontario’s Auditor General to review the OLG’s “gaming modernization plan.’’
Good news, but far too late.
Ontario is facing the assassination of the horse racing industry; thousands of jobs have already been lost and countless horses have died as the game implodes. The end game of it all appears to be to relocate slot machines from racetracks to bingo parlours. Electronic games already have been placed in bingo halls in several cities, including four whose bingo halls are owned wholly or in part by companies belonging to Liberal Larry Tanenbaum.
Inquiries come and go and no one in this province ever goes to jail for malfeasance, so there’s little point in holding one’s breath this time. But it’s the thought that counts.
Woodbine is begging for a casino. It makes far better logistical sense as a site, even though it would continue the job of killing horse racing, unless there was some kind of revenue redirect. But, like a casino downtown, one at Woodbine wouldn’t be unique.
However, what would allow us to become a tourist destination and unique in the gambling world, or at least this part of it, is single-game sports betting. Serious progress was being made to amend the federal criminal code to allow it, but a couple of out-of-touch senators are holding up the necessary bill and it could crash on the rocks of summer recess and obliterate all progress.
It is the smartest solution. Put sportsbooks in existing casinos and racetracks, peel a little off the top for the landlords and a bit more to fund Canada’s Olympians and then stand back and count all the money — tourists’ money, too. Canadians bet billions on sports now on the Internet. So make it legal and tax/regulate it.
If Ontario became the second jurisdiction with legal sports betting, it would thrive.
Either do that, or else open casino No. 69 in Canada and No. 1,512 in North America, pay Americans to run it, then watch the province dig itself deeper into debt.
http://www.thestar.com/sports/2013/04/19/another_casino_would_be_a_mistake_perkins.html
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