Gaming’s view of other frontiers still evolving

By Jon Ralston

Friday, Dec. 10, 2010 | 2 a.m.

What’s missed in the hyperventilating over whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is making a grand payback or bowing before Caesar in his Internet poker push — hello, Occam’s Razor — is how both the senator and the gamers, coincidentally, have evolved on the issue.

And how this change is so like other changes, especially for Nevada gamers who for years have fluttered about like a gaggle of Chicken Littles until they saw a lot of money to be made. For those of us who have watched this for decades, it’s a striking case of déjà vu that shows just how the political elite bend to the whims of the gaming doyens and raises the age-old question: Is what’s good for the big casinos always good for Nevada?

A quick review of history:

1970s — New Jersey legalizes gaming. Nevada casinos say it will kill the state. State lives. Gamers invest in New Jersey.

1980s — Domestic, foreign gaming catches on. Nevada casinos say it will kill the state. State lives. Gamers invest in other jurisdictions.

1990s — Indian gaming begins to spread. Nevada casinos say it will kill the state. State lives. Gamers invest in tribal gaming.

2000s — Chatter about new frontier of Internet gaming grows. Nevada casinos say it will kill the state. State lives. Gamers push the Strip Dream Act, authored by Reid.

A familiar pattern indeed. And the common thread has always been that the big gaming corporations will do, situationally, what they believe is best for their bottom lines and/or shareholders, and compliant Nevada regulators generally will do what the casino companies ask them to do. Gaming regulators are supposed to look out for the state’s interests, not corporate interests, but, the argument goes, they generally have coincided.

Steve Wynn was a prophet on this long ago, dismissing the naysayers and arguing that new places will produce new gamblers, who sooner or later will want to visit the ultimate gaming destination. No, not Macau; back then, he meant Las Vegas.

Internet gaming seems, of all the challenges, the most dicey. And many of the companies for years were skittish about getting into the business because it might threaten Nevada visitation, and the security risks were uncertain.

And the state’s public officials, just as they were worried about extra-Nevada gaming until their patrons were not, have been especially Cassandra-like about Internet gaming. And the loudest among them — Harry Reid.

“Anyone who gambles on the Internet should go see a psychiatrist,” Reid told the Review-Journal in 1999. “How in the world anyone could think they can guarantee a fair game on the Internet is beyond my ability to comprehend.”

As recently as five months ago, a Reid aide raised questions to the paper about a broad Internet gaming bill making its way through the House: “Sen. Reid would not allow any bill to move forward if it would hurt the hundreds of thousands of Nevadans employed by the gaming industry.”

Granted, security technologies have become far advanced, if not foolproof. But the key change — as it always is — has been the realization by the gaming companies in a brave new economy, they must find new ways to make money. It’s easy to see what’s at stake here with the Strip Dream Act — Union Gaming forecasts that the Web poker bill, which would favor only a chosen few major companies, could bring in $200 million to MGM Resorts International by 2012. Other major corporations, especially Caesars Entertainment, would make a fortune, too.

It’s easy to say Reid is just paying back corporations that bused workers to the polls to vote for him, contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to re-elect him and even appeared in campaign commercials for him. And, of course, he is.

But the larger issue for Nevada is whether this is a case of what’s salutary for the casinos’ fiscal health being good for the state’s economic future. So far, most of their ventures away from Las Vegas Boulevard South have not obviously hurt the state, although the preeminence of Macau and the size of California’s gaming economy make one wonder. And gaming’s serial overreaching in Carson City — trying to nullify jury verdicts, attempting to minimize taxation on art collections, seeking to indemnify against angry customers — has helped cultivate an image of rapacious-at-all-costs, bloodless-all-the-time corporations.

What if these companies, desperate to right their listing financial ships, are wrong this time about their manifest destiny? We may not get a chance to find out because the Strip Dream Act appears to be dead for now. But if it is revived, let’s hope there is a robust debate so it is not a nightmare for Nevada.