No women who look like this have ever been in a sports book.
In a shocking turn of events, the state of Illinois passed a budget this year, on time (well, a couple days late) and it’s balanced (with some fancy math, sure.) How did they accomplish such a feat and find money to fix our crumbling roads and sagging bridges, provide kids with wax cartons of milk and a Saltine or two for lunch, fund the state pensions, etc.? Well, they jacked up the tax on gas again, and cigarettes again, and some other stuff. But in real news they legalized marijuana and rammed through a huge casino gaming expansion.
They tossed around huge revenue projections for each. They estimate in the first full year marijuana sales will generate $107 million for the state general fund and another $30 for “cannabis business development.” Gambling’s where the real money is and the state projects $2.7 billion in one-time revenue (which includes licenses, construction, planning, etc.) and $630 million in annual revenue to the state year over year.
Those are some pretty impressive numbers. And, if history has taught us anything, they are bullshit.
What isn’t bullshit is that both are new, real, revenue streams in a state that sorely needs them. We can debate the societal benefits/costs of legalizing weed and gambling all you want…actually, we won’t, because I don’t want to. What I’m interested in is this really intriguing article published by Pro Publica on June 4, which covers just how exaggerated the revenue projections turned out to be in 2009 when the General Assembly rammed through the Video Gaming Act, which was supposed to generate $300 million a year, and has never come close.
So, based on that am I against this gaming expansion that just passed? Hell no. Video gaming sucks. Go through a real casino sometime and look at the losers who are camped out for hours at the slots and video poker games. I know. I sit next to them sometimes. Wait, that didn’t come out right. But honest to God, the Westgate in Vegas had a Saved By the Bell slot machine. Was I supposed to NOT play that? Anyway, think of that crowd and then double the desperation and that’s what the crowd looks like at video gaming “parlors” in Illinois.
The biggest difference between the bill that just passed and any previous gambling legalization in Illinois is that this one has a real game-changer in it, thanks to your friends over there at the United States Supreme Court. This time, we get to bet on sports. The new casinos in Rockford, Chicago, Waukegan, Danville (man, that one’s gonna be rough), and Williamson County (Carbondale) can build sports books in them. In fact, if they want to make it, they have to.
So, when Pro Publica gets their panties in a wad about how the video gaming stations never lived up to their projections, they aren’t wrong, but comparing that to this is a pointless exercise.
Take Rockford for instance. There are video gaming machines in basically every bar, most restaurants, a laundromat or two, and a few Catholic grade school lunch rooms (probably). I like to consider myself somewhat of an accomplished degenerate and I have never spent a single cent in any of those machines. But, when they build the casino/sportsbook/hotel/e-coli waterpark at the old Clock Tower Resort site (conveniently located right off the State Street Interstate 90 exit) I’m going to be sorely tempted to wear out a cushion in the sports book. Although, Rockford being Rockford, they kept the site empty and ready for development for more than a year after tearing the Clock Tower down (I guess they finally got tired of people getting shot there) waiting to see if a gaming expansion bill would pass, and now that it did there’s a dispute over who owes who money. Now, that’s the Illinois way!
Rockford was really under the gun in this budget cycle, because after decades of false starts, the Ho-Chunk Nation is poised to begin construction on a $405 million casino in nearby Beloit, Wisconsin, poised to eat Rockford’s gambling lunch.
So, Rockford needed gaming expansion in general to pass, and specifically one with legalized sports gambling so they could get the first toe hold for the “interested sportsmen/sportswomen” in the stateline. They got it, and their second break is that Wisconsin’s constitution currently prohibits sports gambling, and there is no current legislation in the works to change that.
Nobody thinks that it won’t eventually, but when they finally get around to it, the state will have to work with the 11 Native American tribes that operate casinos in the state on an individual basis to make it happen. The tribes don’t have to all agree at the same time, it can be done on a tribe-by-tribe basis. Regardless, it won’t happen soon, but it would behoove Rockford to get theirs built ASAP.
Given all that where Pro Publica really misses the boat is that the real money isn’t going to be made in the brick and mortar casinos, racetrack/casino hybrid “racinos” (got how I hate that phony word), and video gaming establishments. We’re already used to betting on our phones, and we’re only going to get more used to that. There will be a crowd for those places, sure. There are people who will love the communal aspect of going out, betting, hanging out with friends and strangers and screaming “Goddamnit!” when Zach LaVine dribbles out the last 12 seconds of a half and misses a 30 footer by 27 feet.
I get that. I’m not likely to be one of those people, and I won’t have to physically wear out the cushion in that sports book, and neither will you. We can just wear a groove into our couch and lose junior’s college fund when Eddy Piniero somehow pulls off a triple doink to fail to cover against the Broncos in week two. We’ll all have to download new apps to do it, because the bill will force DraftKings and FanDuel to wait 18 months before they can buy licenses. The proprietary ones better be good, though, or I’ll just keep using Bovada.
Look, I know that the run-up and negotiations for this bill were rife with shady dealings and conflicts of interest, and those of us who live in this state have become troublingly inured to this kind of thing. It’s sort of like the Washington Post’s sanctimonious new “Democracy dies in darkness” masthead tagline, only in Illinois it’s more like, “Democracy’s not dead, we just need to run this by a few of our ‘friends’ first.” It would have great if Illinois had done this thoughtfully and purposefully and not just thrown an 800 page bill together in a rush in an overtime legislative session, but hey, at least this time they didn’t have to literally turn the clock back to do it. I suppose that’s progress. Never let perfect be the enemy of the good, or, the barely adequate.
I’d like to see the areas that got approval for new casinos and the slowly dying racetracks get their shit in order before Buffalo Wild Wings becomes the go-to place to eat overpriced food and drink overpriced beers and bet on sports, because that’s coming. And knowing Rockford, if a chain actually gets in on this, it’ll crush the locals.
Don’t believe me?
