Wednesday, June 13, 2012

INDEPENDENT STUDY: Proposed Maryland Casinos Clearly Targeting In-State Residents // SEE FULL REPORT & MAP

Today Senator Rich Madaleno, an appointee to Maryland's gambling task force, Tweeted a link to a new "independent study" by PriceWaterhouseCoopers about the impact of adding a Prince George's casino to our growing number of slot machine halls:


While the "independent" researchers conclude that Anne Arundel and Baltimore casinos would lose between 16%-25% of their revenues to Prince George's, there are more interesting nuggets hidden in the report. Senator Mike Miller's plan smells fishy to Maryland Juice. See a few highlights below:

1. THE PLANNED CASINOS ARE CLEARLY TARGETING MARYLAND RESIDENTS - One alarming piece of the "independent" report, is that the existing and proposed casinos in Maryland are clearly planning on most visitors being in-state residents. This truly belies their claims that we need to expand casino revenues to bring Virginians, Pennsylvanians, and others to our facilities. The study notes that the radius for most gamblers at these facilities will live within a forty minute drive. The report states the obvious: "Those who must travel a longer time to reach the facility are expected to visit less often." The analysts then provide us a map to show the boundaries of a 40-minute driving radius around each casino:

The boundaries show a 40-minute drive or less for each casino.

HARDLY ANY NEIGHBORHOODS NEAR THE CASINOS ARE OUTSIDE MARYLAND - Unfortunately, PriceWaterhouseCoopers did not clearly mark the state boundaries on their map, so Maryland Juice has provided them for readers. As you can see below, the vast super-majority of neighborhoods within a forty-minute drive to planned Maryland casinos will be in... Maryland!

The areas in red roughly show places OUTSIDE of Maryland.

2. P.G. SLOTS WILL TAKE 1 IN 4 DOLLARS FROM ANNE ARUNDEL & 1 IN 6 FROM BALTIMORE - The tables below show the economic impact on Baltimore and Anne Arundel from a planned Prince George's casino:







See the full report below:

Maryland Gambling Work Group Report (PriceWaterhouseCoopers) - June 2012

1 comment:

  1. I think that this is not focusing on the issue at hand, the only location the gaming commission is discussing is adding a location in PG. The data proves that the already approved slots locations do draw mostly from Marylanders but that issue was put to a statewide vote and passed, even Montgomery County approved it. According to this data, the only location that would draw out of state money would be the PG location. Therefore if the point is that we are just pulling Marylanders to gamble then that does not apply for the current debate, that issue was resolved by voters 4 years ago.

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