2017

Week of Action to Stop Predatory Gambling, Sept. 29-Oct. 5, 2024

To spotlight the 40 million Americans harmed by the greed of big gambling operators and to prevent more victims, we are organizing the National Week of Action to Stop Predatory Gambling, Sept. 29- Oct. 5, 2024.

At least 100 actions will be happening across America and the world during the week.

We are calling for 100% participation from you and everyone who wants a future better than the one predatory gambling offers us. It’s an opportunity for thousands of citizens across the US and the world to act together to confront the unjust and dishonest policy of predatory gambling.

Do your part. Please commit two hours to participate locally in some way during the week of 9/29-10/5. If you can’t commit the time, then please participate by making a gift of $25 or more tax-deductible to support our work locally.

Possible Actions Include: The “action” can be anything you (or your group) want it to be. It could be a prayer vigil, a sign-holding visibility with homemade signs, participating in a “Freedom Players” event at a regional casino (or at a local restaurant/tavern with video gambling machines)…the ideas are limitless.

Also, here is a brief, effective guide that we put together with the Alabama group about how to organize a prayer vigil in your place of worship that weekend.

If you want to stop the harm that predatory gambling inflicts upon your community, then you personally need to act. Don’t think it will happen without your sacrifice because it won’t.

Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock was a gambling machine addict

Investigative Journalism, Online Gambling, Regional Casinos

Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock had a serious gambling machine addiction. Read the latest New York Times story on his gambling behavior. Electronic gambling machines were at the center of his life.

Yet news coverage continues to use terms like “professional gambler” when describing Paddock. He was not a professional gambler.

No professional gambler uses slot machines and video poker machines like Paddock did. The machines create the illusion of skill but a user is mathematically guaranteed to lose all their money the longer they play them. Once you press the button on the machine, there is no skill involved. The computer inside the machine (known as the Random Number Generator) decides whether you lose or win. The player has no control over the outcome.

The image below is from the landmark book investigating electronic gambling machines Addiction By Design (Pg 112):

The business model of casinos is based on people like Paddock losing over and over again. While he may have won occasionally, it’s a statistical certainty that he lost huge sums of money the longer and more frequently he played as the graph above shows.

Paddock was playing hundreds of hands per hour (about one hand every six seconds) for many hours straight. Almost day after day.

No credible gambling addiction expert unaffiliated with gambling operators and independently-funded would describe him as a “responsible gambler.” ‘Responsible gambling’ is little more than a marketing slogan made up by commercialized gambling operators and their partners. Its intent is to place the spotlight on the citizen and away from their predatory and fraudulent business practices.

Whether Paddock’s out-of-control addiction to electronic gambling machines was a central factor in what happened last Sunday will be determined by the FBI investigation. But news coverage and public discussion should not normalize Paddock’s single-minded obsession with gambling machines and the exploitive business practices used by the casinos to keep Paddock gambling continuously.

Les Bernal, National Director, Stop Predatory Gambling

What is Predatory Gambling?

Uncategorized

Predatory gambling is when corporate gambling interests partner with government to cheat and exploit citizens. It ultimately forces the taxpayers who don’t gamble to foot the bill for the long-term public budget problems that result.

It’s a form of consumer financial fraud like price gouging and false advertising and it causes life-changing financial losses for tens of millions of citizens. Over the next eight years, the American people are on course to lose more than $1 trillion of their personal wealth to government-sanctioned gambling. At least half of this personal wealth – $500 billion – will be lost to state lotteries.

Predatory gambling is America’s biggest most-neglected problem.

The almost sole focus of state-sanctioned gambling has been to maximize profits, not protect the public interest. It’s exempt from truth-in-advertising laws, giving gambling corporations wide latitude to market gambling, grossly exaggerate chances of winning and aggressively lure citizens to lose their money.

Let people gamble if they want, some may say. But we already have the freedom to gamble. Up to now, many Americans participate in office pools for the Super Bowl, NCAA March Madness brackets, make casual wagers on the golf course with their friends, or play a Friday night poker game.

These informal events are examples of social gambling. There is no “house” skimming a large profit, guaranteeing the participant will inevitably lose over the long-term. No one is wagering continuously at rapid speeds of every five seconds, for hour after hour. Very few people feel an intense “buzz” or high from the experience. There’s no aggressive and deceptive marketing to get people to gamble more often with bigger sums of money. No one is lending or borrowing cash to participate or ends up losing their entire pay check. It doesn’t go on all day, every day of the week, year round. And it doesn’t require the majority of Americans who rarely gamble to subsidize it with any of their own money.

Without the legal, administrative, regulatory, and promotional privileges provided by state governments, lotteries, regional casinos and other commercialized gambling operators would not be spreading into mainstream American life as they are today. They would likely still exist only on the fringes of the society.

The U.S. has a lottery problem. But it’s not the people buying tickets.

Essays, How Gambling Impacts Democratic Values, Investigative Journalism, Lotteries, Lowering the Standard of Living for Ordinary Citizens

From The Washington Post:

Despite their role in increasing economic inequality, lotteries remain remarkably popular in the United States, as millions of players believe in the distant chance that a lucky gamble will change their life. In 2014, annual sales reached over $70 billion, and Americans spent more on lottery tickets per year than they spent on books, sports tickets, music, video games and movie tickets combined.

The United States has a lottery problem, but it runs much deeper than players duped by a “stupid tax.” Public officials need to address the nation’s lottery addiction. When they do so, however, they need to consider not only the root causes of lotteries’ popularity — for example, declining access to social mobility and the concentration of lottery outlets in poor neighborhoods — but also the beliefs about taxes and state revenue that ushered in lottery legislation in the first place.

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Judge lets suit continue vs casino tech biz Scientific Games over patent fraud, antitrust claims

Litigation

A federal judge has denied a request made by Scientific Games Corporation and its subsidiary Bally Technologies Inc. and Bally Gaming Inc. to fold up the sole remaining count in a competitor’s antitrust lawsuit over casino card shuffling technology.

U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly handed down the opinion on Sept. 1,2017 holding the plaintiffs provided sufficient evidence that Las Vegas-based Scientific Games may have acted fraudulently.

Scientific Games is accused by rival Shuffle Tech International LLC and its subsidiaries, Aces Up Gaming Inc. and Poydras-Talrick LLC, of misusing patents for an automatic card shuffling device to stifle competition

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In System With Little Oversight, Connecticut’s Biggest Lottery Winners Often Pay Huge Price

Fraud, Lotteries, Predatory Business Practices

Lottery players in Connecticut spend millions on tickets every day, most chasing a once-in-a-lifetime dream that never comes. But a handful of big winners show up again and again, seemingly beating astronomical odds to rack up dozens, even hundreds of sizable payouts.

A first-ever analysis of lottery winnings dating back to mid-1998, conducted by The Courant in collaboration with students at the Columbia School of Journalism, found 57 people who have won $1,000 or more at least 50 times. A dozen have won that much at least 100 times.

For those in Connecticut who have beaten the odds an extraordinary number of times, chances are most of them have spent far more on tickets than they have won.

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New York’s Bet on New Casinos Has Yet to Hit Jackpot

Government Revenues from Gambling, Regional Casinos

This was to be a year of celebration for New York’s booming gambling industry, with gleaming new casinos opening, rapturous bettors flocking in and a win-win for the state, and a torrent of new taxes pouring into government coffers at no cost to anyone but the bettors themselves.

But like casinos — where glitter often hides the grime — the reality has been far less glamorous, with underwhelming returns, evidence of industry cannibalization and a new, sharp-edged conflict between the state and a major tribal gambling operation.

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Massachusetts slashes problem gambling services funding by 17 percent

Investigative Journalism, Public Health, Regional Casinos

When corporate gambling interests and state officials lobbied for government-sanctioned casinos in the state, they told the public that problem gambling services would be fully funded. Just a few years later, the state is slashing problem gambling services funding by almost 20 percent.

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O.J. Simpson parole hearing is an example of the new kind of gambling wagers

Investigative Journalism, Online Gambling, Sports Betting

Allowing government-sanctioned sports gambling across the U.S. would corporate gambling operators to offer wagers on virtually anything far beyond sports. O.J. Simpson will be out of jail soon.

OJ Simpson’s hearing in front of the Nevada Board of Parole is one example. The sportsbook Bovada.lv advertised to citizens to place bets on the outcome.

Under the proposition bet: “Will O.J. Simpson be granted parole in 2017?” the lines were “Yes” (-300) and “No” (+200). The means to make $100 on a bet for “Yes” you would have to risk $300 while a $100 bet for “No” would net you $200, making “Yes” a heavy favorite.

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Amid state takeover, bond agency designates negative outlook for Atlantic City

Government Revenues from Gambling, Investigative Journalism, Regional Casinos

Moody’s Investors Service issued a May 2017 report on Atlantic City that kept the city’s general-obligation bond rating at Caa3 but revised the outlook to positive from negative.

The ratings company believes the state intervention has had a positive effect on the city, but it remains concerned about the city’s continued reliance on the casino industry and high debt burden.

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