It’s as if another casino opened in our region.
Nearly 700 new electronic gaming devices – we’ll call them ‘tavern slots’ for this editorial – are raking in money across the Illinois Quad-City region. That’s more slots than Clinton’s Wild Rose Casino and almost as many as Davenport’s Rhythm City
Statistics gathered by Times reporter Barb Ickes show those new slots are siphoning away money from our region’s four casinos.
Statewide, Illinois tavern slots now outnumber gaming machines in Illinois’ 10 casinos. Illinois has more tavern slots than all of Iowa’s 18 casinos.
It doesn’t take a wizard to see where this trend is leading. The limits are off in Illinois and as we’ve seen before, Iowa will not sit idly by and watch casino revenue plummet.
Illinois and Iowa continue to push gambling away from regional tourist destinations and into everyone’s backyard. These Illinois figures are bound to get the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission’s attention.
Illinois’ expanded gaming law shares tavern slot revenue with host cities and host businesses. That creates powerful, hometown political pressure to stand up to the vested casino interests.
In Iowa, who’s to say local towns and businesses shouldn’t get a piece of the action lawmakers have restricted to big casino firms?
The legislature, that’s who.
Iowa’s Racing and Gaming Commission warned lawmakers earlier this year of the gaming explosion. Union Gaming’s analysis for Iowa’s commission concluded, “there appears to be no end for the proliferation of gaming options across the Midwest. In addition to the recent growth in video gaming machines across Illinois, the state legislature appears poised to again take up the expansion of gaming with the possibility of five new casinos as well as slots at racetracks. In Wisconsin where Native American tribes operate 24 casinos at present, efforts are in progress to establish four additional casinos… .”
And online gambling looms as an even bigger threat.
So welcome the equivalent of another casino to our region. If past portends future, we’ll be welcoming another, and another and another.
