The Narrow Path to Gaming Growth
The Sankofa is a mythical bird in African lore that flies boldly into the future while its eyes are focused backward, keeping watch on the best of the past.
The gaming industry needs to lure the Sankofa out of retirement. Regulators and lawmakers across the United States could stand a strong dose of backward thinking. In particular, the Sankofa followers among us should focus on 1978, when the first casino in the continental United States outside Nevada opened in Atlantic City.
That monumental event was big news at the time, to be sure. When entertainer Steve
Lawrence—surrounded by a gaggle of men in polyester suits—tossed the first dice at Resorts International on May 26, 1978, photos of his outstretched right arm made their way across the globe.
Few people today remember Lawrence, but millions are still cheering as those metaphorical dice continue their roll. The domestic gaming industry is replete with mind-numbing numbers that few in 1978 would have had the temerity to project. As of 2024, the American Gaming Association notes, commercial casinos in 38 states generated more than $72 billion in annual gaming revenue and about $16 billion in annual state and local tax revenue. Those 2024 records will certainly be broken when 2025 data is reported.
Two years before New Jersey rolled the dice, voters took a real gamble when they approved a statewide referendum that led the way to legal casinos in Atlantic City, then arguably the poorest city in the state. This year marks a full 50 years since that historic vote, which gave birth to the modern gaming industry.
The dice are now in the hands of new shooters: state legislatures. While a half-century of growth has fueled incredible economic benefits, the gaming industry and its beneficiaries must recognize two critical counter-trends:
• Public sector leadership is not keeping pace with technological and related changes.
• Public sector leadership is not paying sufficient heed to what’s worked in the past.
A history of economic growth was not pre-ordained, nor was it inevitable. It’s the residue of a national focus on gaming integrity. Casinos in New Jersey are authorized under core principles:
• A gaming license must be earned by those who affirmatively demonstrate that they possess requisite levels of good character, honesty and integrity.
• States set the rules for licensure, such as the type of authorized gaming, the location of casinos and similar guidelines that operators and their investors can trust.
Of all the challenges facing gaming today, none are more critical than the trifecta of sweepstakes, predictions markets and “skill” games. These—along with similar challenges that we can surely expect this year—are being addressed in various states by lawmakers and regulators who are trying very hard to move forward into this challenging new world.
The current generation of state lawmakers cannot ignore those challenges. Legislators are considering “solutions” that include legalizing these challenges and converting them into taxpaying economic generators. That approach would be cleaner and easier to implement than an alternative policy of outlawing such games. But it would also be dangerous… and wrong.
Legislators tempted to follow that approach don’t recognize that doing so will weaken the rules they and their predecessors have already established. Operators, suppliers and investors who abided by the rules and invested billions of dollars in communities and states will see those investments become less valuable. As a result, future investments will decline—and perhaps vanish. The returns on existing investments will similarly decline—and potentially vanish.
In such a world, legislators will no longer be the rule-makers. They will be the rule-followers.
By definition, those who undermine the basis of gaming, who look for loopholes and try to say their form of gaming is somehow not gaming, have not earned that privilege. A purist might say they have effectively failed to demonstrate that they meet the standards for licensure.
Call me a purist.
Venturing into the future absent the guardrails of integrity is a prescription for economic disaster in gaming. My mentor, Steven Perskie, was a New Jersey legislator in the 1970s who recognized that gaming’s biggest problem was an absence of public confidence in its operations. Gaming could not be trusted, so he drafted a constitutional amendment followed by a statute that demanded an adherence to honesty.
The rules he established in New Jersey turned the concept of “gaming integrity” from an oxymoron into an effective principle. A half-century later, this industry should follow the example of the mythical Sankofa: Venture forward but never take your eyes off the past.
Michael Pollock serves as senior policy advisor for Spectrum Gaming Group, after retiring in 2023 as managing director. He began analyzing the casino industry in 1978 and served as spokesman for the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. He was a close adviser to the chairman, and he oversaw the Office of Legislative Liaison. Pollock is the author of the award-winning book Hostage to Fortune: Atlantic City and Casino Gambling. He is the former editorial page editor of The Press of Atlantic City and has won 20 journalism awards.
