The Casino Business
A casino is a place where people can gamble on games of chance and in some cases, skill. Casinos offer a variety of games to patrons and they often provide food, drinks and stage shows to enhance the gambling experience. The casino business is a very profitable one and there are a number of built-in advantages that ensure that the house will win in the long run. These advantages are referred to as the house edge.
Modern casinos have sophisticated security systems, including a physical security force that patrols the floor and a specialized surveillance department that operates the closed circuit television system known as “the eye in the sky.” Casinos also have specific rules of conduct and behavior that help deter crime and cheating.
Something about the glitz, glamour and high stakes of the casino business attracts criminal elements. It seems that many of the world’s most devious gangsters have found their way into the gambling industry. Mob money flowed steadily into Reno and Las Vegas during the 1950s, and mobsters became intimately involved with the operations, even taking sole or partial ownership of some of them. Legitimate businessmen were reluctant to invest in a gambling operation with the taint of organized crime, but real estate investors and hotel chains saw an opportunity to cash in on the influx of tourists.
Most casino customers are wealthy adults of the baby boomer generation who have plenty of free time and disposable income to spend on a fun pastime. According to a 2005 survey conducted by Roper Reports GfK NOP and the U.S. Gaming Panel by TNS, the average American casino gambler is a forty-six-year-old woman from a household with an above-average income.
A casino is a place where people can gamble on games of chance and in some cases, skill. Casinos offer a variety of games to patrons and they often provide food, drinks and stage shows to enhance the gambling experience. The casino business is a very profitable one and there are a number of built-in…