The weak recovery has squeezed their gambling budgets, and their trips to casinos are fewer, he says. From a news report on the troubles of a recently opened Ohio casino:Īmeet Patel, general manager of the property, says the softness in casino revenue that he and other operators have seen has been driven by a key demographic: women older than 50 who used to bet $50 to $75 per visit. Nor is downscale America sharing much in the post-2009 recovery. Unfortunately for the casino industry’s growth hopes, downscale America has less money to spend today than it did before 2007. Affluent and educated people visit casinos less often than poorer people do for the same reasons that they smoke less and drink less and weigh less. Outside of Las Vegas-now home to only 20 percent of the nation’s casino industry-casino gambling has evolved into a downscale business. Yet there’s already reason to expect the casino to disappoint everyone involved: the city looking for tax revenues, the workers hoping for jobs, the investors expecting hefty returns. On August 26, a new Caesar’s casino will open on the site of an old chemical factory, a little more than 2 miles from the famous Inner Harbor and Camden Yards baseball stadium. Like many troubled cities, Baltimore has turned to casino gambling as its solution.

Baltimore is a troubled city, as you know from The Wire.

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