Are Slots Really Helping?

The world of gambling has been seeing a steady decline in the past year, as the current state of the national economy has been in a downward spiral. The unofficial recession has affected everything from the price of gasoline to the price of orange juice, and many households are in a month to month struggle to get by. Coupled with the recent barrage of firings and job loss, the rise in the unemployment rate has pushed several thousands of households into severe turmoil. With all these things happening simultaneously, it is quite understandable that people now have very little discretionary income that they can spend on high-risk entertainment  like gambling.

However, recession or not, land and online casinos, race tracks, and slot machine parlors all must get by or go belly up. One of those seeing the most decrease in traffic has to be the racetracks. Due to a steady decline in exposure in the popular media, the “cool” factor of horse betting is simply not what it used to be. Furthermore, with the advent of online slots and poker, people are finding that they can gamble from the comfort of their own home, instead of planning a day trip to somewhere where they have to spend money on incidentals, in addition to the possible loss of their gambling kitty.

The recent trend has been race tracks bringing in slot machines to try to up the popularity and foot traffic of their facilities. The idea is that people will be more exposed to the venue and that will pique their interest. However, the latest findings have not really shown any improvement in revenues for horse racing, since the cross over effect is still not being attained. It seems that tracks that have had slots installed have seen an increase in foot traffic, but for the most part  have not been able to turn those people into horse racing fans.

Still the year is not over till it’s over, and only time will tell what, if any, affect the slot machines have had at racetracks across the country.

Back to August 2008 Archive.