Harrah's Loveman Off Base in G2E Keynote Speech

Gary Loveman, the president, chairman and CEO of Harrah's (now Caesar's) Entertainment, gave one of the keynote speeches at this month's Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. The premise of his speech was that the casino industry is getting a bum rap and its not fair that the industry is more heavily and unfairly regulated as opposed to liquor and fast food industries. Really? I was there in person and I had a hard time not breaking out in laughter.

This wasn't the only poor reasoning expounded by the leader of the company that introduced 6-5 blackjack to Las Vegas and then whines how it's difficult to expand his business to get more people to play his chump games, but I digress...

He stated that due to regulation, casino businesses aren't that widespread. He showed a global map showing the relatively few locales around the globe that have casinos and used that to state that the industry has lots of room to grow, if not for politicians and regulators operating under unfair assumptions. Maybe there are some unfair assumptions regarding the casino industry, but the history of Las Vegas is history. Organized crime was heavily involved and therefore the casino industry due to that history will ALWAYS be heavily regulated and scrutinized. That's not going to go away.

But that's not my main criticism of this line of argument. Loveman claims that due to this regulation and restriction on casinos that people can't enjoy themselves with gambling when they want. THAT IS NOT TRUE. What these folks in the brick-and-mortar casino industry need to get through their heads is that if someone wants to play poker, a slot machine, bingo, roulette, etc., they can do that ONLINE....RIGHT NOW....FROM THEIR HOME. They don't need to come to your casino. If you have an internet connection, you can gamble - period. They don't need to travel to your facility. If your facility was someplace customers really wanted to visit, they'll come. If the games at your brick-and-mortar casino tend to nickel-and-dime your customers, regulations are the least of your worries, in my opinion.

The other off-base argument I'll mention is that he tried to equate gambling with constitutional rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Hey, Loveman, last I checked there's no "Lucky 7th Amendment" in the US Constitution prohibiting Congress from infringing the right of the people to bear the handle of a slot machine. This was a really stupid argument. Again I had a hard time not laughing. To be fair to the audience, they were well behaved and didn't laugh either...or they agreed with Mr. Loveman, which means the land-based casino folks are in really deep trouble when online gambling finally becomes legal in the US. When? Don't know, but it's only a matter of time.

The Las Vegas Sun has an article on Mr. Loveman's address, which you can find here if interested.