Does Chuck E. Cheese turn kids into gambling addicts?

Does Chuck E. Cheese turn kids into gambling addicts?

Tuesday, 04 June 2013 12:18

 

BY REBECCA SHEEHAN
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Everyone has been inside one of these. The stage is set: Kids are running around in a panic, sweating trying to utilize their tokens to the max in order to win as many tickets as possible in order to cash them in for a useless and unnecessary prize. Bells and sirens are going off, cash machines are dolling out tokens and the sound of “ching, ching,” is echoing all around you. No folks we are not in an Atlantic City Casino, instead, we are talking about America’s family fun place: Chuck E. Cheese.

Although Chuck E. Cheese is supposed to be aimed at being good ole' family fun, instead it resembles all too much the sights and sounds of being on a casino floor. The only difference one can see is that in this establishment the children are doing all the gambling.

A Time article is claiming that thanks to a new legislation in Florida targeting Internet café sweepstake gambling operations, there’s an argument to be made that some Chuck E. Cheese games involve gambling and are therefore illegal. And considering the main clientele at Chuck E. Cheese are in fact children, this may be an issue to consider.

Last month, the state of Florida legislation specifically outlaws video gambling machines, as well as small coin-operated games of chance. According to the Miami Herald, with the new legislation law enforcement officers ended up "seizing dozens of machines from mom-and-pop stores and cafes and arresting their owners.”

In recent years there has been a crackdown on this type of Internet Café’s. According to a Wall Street Journal report on the efforts in places such as Ohio, South Carolina, and Michigan to shut down — or at least regulate — these cafes, which are filled with simulated slot-machine games and often operate totally out in the open in strip mall locations. While the gambling games vary, most of the machines require the participant to add money to a plastic card and have become very popular among the elderly population.

After internet café’s started popping up all over Massachusetts with gaming machines, Attorney General Martha Coakley affirmed that these operations were illegal in the summer of 2011.
“This kind of activity, gambling, is not allowed under Massachusetts law,” Coakley said, according to the Boston Globe. “They are totally unregulated, there’s no oversight, and there is no protection for the consumer.”

This isn’t the first time that the Chuck E. Cheese chain has been discussed in the same breath as gambling. In 2011, a mom in San Diego sued the company for $5 million because the “casino-style gambling devices” could put children on the road to gambling addiction.

 

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/style/does-chuck-e-cheese-turn-kids-into-gambling-addicts

 

 

Chuck E Cheese: Creating Young Gambling Addicts

Chuck E. Cheese: Where a Kid Can Gamble Like an Adult

By Brad TuttleMay 14, 2013

What with all the flashing screens, dinging bells, and glazed-over customers absorbed in the games at hand, a Chuck E. Cheese arcade bears quite a resemblance to the slot machine section of a casino. Are kids, in fact, gambling in between their pizza and soda?

Thanks to new legislation in Florida targeting Internet café sweepstake gambling operations, there’s an argument to be made that some Chuck E. Cheese games involve gambling and are therefore illegal. Since kids are the chain’s main clientele, that’s a problem for more reason than one.

Many states have cracked down on Internet café gambling in recent years. Last summer, the Wall Street Journal reported on the efforts in places such as Ohio, South Carolina, and Michigan to shut down—or at least regulate—these cafes, which are filled with simulated slot-machine games and often operate totally out in the open in strip mall locations. While the games vary, most involve plastic swipe cards that are purchased by customers and give users a certain number of “sweepstakes” entries in games of chance played on video screens. The games, which offer cash prizes, have been especially popular among the elderly. “It has become my world,” one 70-year-old woman told the WSJ while inside her neighborhood gambling café in Ohio.

Such Internet cafes began appearing in Massachusetts in large numbers around 2009, and in the summer of 2011, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley affirmed that these operations were illegal. “This kind of activity, gambling, is not allowed under Massachusetts law,” Coakley said at the time, according to the Boston Globe. “They are totally unregulated, there’s no oversight, and there is no protection for the consumer.”


Read more: http://business.time.com/2013/05/14/chuck-e-cheese-where-a-kid-can-gamble-like-an-adult/#ixzz2TMPH4hFQ

Chuck E. Cheese and the Road to Gambling Addiction

 Sep 4, 2012

Road to gambling addiction may begin in childhood

 

Looking back on his childhood, Luke Burbank thinks his fondness for gambling could have begun in front of a skee ball machine.

As a kid, Luke lived for a big win on the Chuck E. Cheese games. The string of tickets would fly out of the machine, hitting the floor and folding up over each other because there were too many to count.  When that happens, "you feel like you beat the system."  Stifling childhood gambling isn't the goal of a Lynnwood city ordinance that prevents merit-based ticketing at the local Chuck E. Cheese, but it is a result.  According to the restaurant, the ordinance has made the Lynnwood gaming area the lowest performing in the state.  Now Chuck E. Cheese wants to amend the ordinance, which only allows four tickets to be dispensed per game, no matter what score you earn on skee ball.  While the rule may be aimed at adult gambling, tiny ticket grasping hands are missing out. Luke feels for the kids who will never experience that high.  But his early days earning tickets could have also led to his love of craps, black jack, and poker. "I really think I developed my love of gambling at Chuck E. Cheese."  Luke took that love with him to the fair where he would breeze by the rides and head for the booth to knock over the milk pitchers. Even though they were rigged, he lived for that "beat the system" moment. Now, he enjoys Snoqualmie, Emerald Queen, and Muckleshoot casinos when he can't make it down to Las Vegas.  Dave tells a different tale of his childhood.  He and his dad would find themselves at the fair, walking by the booths with the milk pitchers and the other "seemingly impossible games." He would spend his dollar at the game booth just to show his dad he was having a good time.  "I hated parting with that dollar."  Dave would have rather put his dollar in a savings account at the bank and watch it grow - even then.  Maybe gamblers don't learn it, they're born with the itch to go "all in" and beat the odds.
The city council in Lynnwood is slated to reconsider the ordinance when it meets Tuesday.


http://mynorthwest.com/75/730822/Road-to-gambling-addiction-may-begin-in-childhood

2011 Gambling Lawsuits

By promoting Gambling in youngsters, a readily available clientele, primed for "Casino Capitalism" and "Something for Nothing" schemes is readily available.

Scratch tickets and lottery tickets are offered as gifts to children.

And we see nothing wrong with that?

This should be an interesting lawsuits that prompts us to re-consider how we exploit our children.



Chuck E. Cheese's sued for tot 'slots'
Written by Dana Littlefield

SAN DIEGO — A San Diego woman has sued the company that owns the Chuck E. Cheese’s family restaurant chain, claiming that many of the games intended for children at these locations are actually illegal gambling devices — like slot machines.

Denise Keller, a local real estate agent and mother of two daughters ages 3 and 5, filed the potential class-action suit in U.S. District Court March 29. According to court documents, she is asking for a jury trial and damages and restitution of at least $5 million.

But attorney Eric Benink, who represents Keller, said the money is a secondary issue. The purpose of the lawsuit, he said, is to prevent Texas-based CEC Entertainment Inc., which owns and operates the restaurants in 48 states, from keeping the machines in its game rooms.

“We don’t think that children should be exposed to casino-style gambling devices at an arcade,” Benink said, adding that the games take only a few seconds to play and some of them feature a roulette-style wheel.

According to the complaint, many of the games in these rooms are operated by inserting tokens, which can be purchased for 25 cents each. When the games are finished, they dispense tickets that can be redeemed for prizes.

The lawsuit notes that with some exceptions, gambling is illegal in California but the penal code makes an exception for games that are predominantly based on skill.

That’s not the case with the games at Chuck E. Cheese’s, according to Keller, who claims in the court documents that she has taken her own children on numerous occasions to the restaurant’s location in La Mesa’s Grossmont Center.

Instead, the suit says, the games are based mostly on chance, and that they could foster addictive behavior in children by enticing them to play repeatedly for tickets. It says the games “create the same highs and lows experienced by adults who gamble their paychecks or the mortgage payment.”

Calls to CEC Entertainment’s attorneys were not immediately returned Thursday.

They have argued in court documents that the games are not illegal under state law. The attorneys contend that the California Legislature never intended to make operating a children’s arcade game a criminal act. Instead, they say, recent amendments to the law show that lawmakers were primarily concerned with the potential for “video slot machines masquerading as legal video games.”

CEC notes that even if the arcade games were illegal, then Keller is an admitted participant in the illegal gambling. Therefore, she should be barred from seeking any damages or restitution.

Attorneys for the company have asked a federal judge to dismiss the case. The judge has not yet ruled on that request.