Louisiana casinos want to rake in the video poker dough

Sunday, Feb. 6, 2000 | 12:48 p.m.

The referendums that outlawed video poker in more than 30 parishes did not affect riverboat casinos, which got the OK from voters. So Baton Rouge's Argosy and Casino Rouge stand to profit from the shutdowns in East Baton Rouge and neighboring Ascension, Livingston and East Feliciana parishes. Video poker machines at bars, restaurants and truck stops did an estimated $80 million annual business in those four parishes.

Dale Darrough, general manger of Casino Rouge, said his boat's marketing consultants figure at least $40 million "disappeared" when the poker machines were unplugged.

"About half is just gone away. They were people who would go out to a restaurant and put a few quarters in the machines while they were waiting for a meal," Darrough said.

"A whole lot of it was just convenience," Darrough said of the poker industry.

But Darrough figures that $40 million per year in displaced poker market is "recoverable." He figures, conservatively, that his boat will wind up with 11 to 12 percent of that money.

Carroll Cotten, vice president of marketing at Casino Rouge, said both boats expanded their poker operations and targeted displaced poker players with advertising campaigns.

"Down the street, they (Argosy) took a whole floor and made a video poker parlor out of it," Cotten said.

"And we took the back end of our third floor and made it into a separate video-poker room that looks a lot like a typical truck stop," Cotten said.

While both boats have experienced some growth in their gambling winnings since the poker shutdowns, it has not yet been much of a windfall.

State police figures show that Casino Rouge's gambling revenues were up 7.7 percent, while Argosy's revenue increased by 16.7 percent from the first half of 1999 to the second half of the year.

Cotten said his riverboat is completing some market research to help the boat go after more of the displaced video poker dough.