We lived in an “appointment” world in 1993, when the first Missouri laws governing casino gambling were written. Voters had approved riverboat gambling, as it was called then, in 1992. The first casinos on boats would open in the spring of 1994.
Many of us still got our national news with the 5:30 network newscasts on television and our local news at 6 and 10 p.m. when those laws were written.
If we wanted to buy new clothes, we went to a clothing store during the hours it was open. We went to grocery stores during their open hours to get our food.
We knew when each day we could go to the mailbox to get letters from friends and relatives.
And by the end of the year we knew that if we wanted to gamble we would have to go to the riverboat at a certain time to be admitted.
The Station Casino-St. Charles and the President Casino on the moored Admiral riverboat opened May 27, 1994. Gamblers could board the boat in St. Charles from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. for a two-hour cruise (for which they paid three to five dollars, depending on the day). If they missed the cruise time, they had to wait for the boat to come back so we could pay to get aboard for the next trip.
The President never cruised. It was permanently moored near the Gateway Arch because the old aluminum Admiral had no engines. Gamblers would pay two dollars during the week and five dollars on weekends and could board every two hours from 10 a.m. to midnight.
But the world was changing and the change accelerated each year. “Appointment living” was beginning to diminish although many of us did not realize it at the time.
There were some hints, however.
The Pew Research Center reported in 1994 that the percentage of Americans getting news from the internet at least once a week had more than tripled since 1991, going from 11-million to 36-million news users.
The number of hosts on the internet tripled from January, 1994 to January, 1996, the year something called a “browser” was created—Netscape, the same year that the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda passed a Free Trade and Processing Act allowing licenses to be given to companies wanting to allow internet users to gamble. By the end of the year there were fifteen gambling websites. The next year there were 200 and by 1998, a study was published showing online gaming revenues had topped $830-million. Modern online gambling in this country dates from November 22, 2010 when the New Jersey Senate passed a bill allowing certain forms of online gambling.
It was about that time that the casino industry was starting to see an erosion in patronage. In Missouri, casino admissions reached almost 54.3-million in FY 2005 then declined for three years before climbing back to almost equal 2005’s number. Admissions began annual declines after FY 2011. In FY 2019 (the last full year before the pandemic crippled casino business), casino admissions had declined by 49%.
Various reasons for the decline can be suggested but the end result seems to be the same—people just don’t go to where casinos are.
So the casinos have to go where the people are.
The situation is not unique to the casino industry. It is part of our changing lifestyles and those changes have become more obvious with the COVID-19 Pandemic that has forced casino closures for in-person business and quarantines for many who would patronize them.
We no longer live in an “appointment” world. We can buy clothing at any time of the day off the internet. We can use the internet to get our groceries delivered. We can order deliveries to our homes from our favorite restaurants. The same with our pharmaceuticals. Telemedicine is eliminating some office and hospital trips.
Casino betting can happen 24 hours a day because, as one source has observed, “everyone has a casino in their pocket.” Casinos are looking for new products that can be offered through the ubiquity of the internet that we call up on our ubiquitous cell phones. First is sports wagering. But later, Missouri legislators are likely to be asked to let table game betting to take place remotely.
Those who find gambling a reprehensible sin will find nothing redeeming about gambling on the internet. But thousands of other Missourians will welcome the opportunities—as they welcome opportunities to grocery shop from home.
In a world where less and less of life is lived by appointment, the gaming industry knows it must change. And it is, as it should.
Missouri’s casino gambling laws must change, too. Laws written and fees created in the days of physical customer presence in casinos need to be changed to account for virtual presence. State services relying on gambling fees and taxes will be increasingly diminished as appointment gambling diminishes. Casinos, profiting from laws of the 1990s appointment culture, resist modernization of the law. It is understandable that they do.
What is not understandable is why the Missouri General Assembly would not want to protect the state’s interests by bringing our laws from the appointment era into the virtual, but very real, era.