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Gambling's Glossy Image Poker
Tour Latest Example Of Aggressive Industry Making A Play For Mainstream
LifestyleNovember 9, 2003 By RICK GREEN, Courant Staff Writer Way back in 1981, before 50 million adults visited casinos at least once a year, before gambling emerged as Connecticut's new economic engine and decades before a TV show about a poker game became a hit, Avery Cardoza published the first of his how-to books. "People really looked down on it," the New York author and publisher recalled of his book on winning at blackjack. "You don't hear these arguments anymore."
For a glimpse, look no further than Foxwoods Resort Casino, where this week, scores of wishful thinkers and assorted small-timers will join high-rollers and fork over $10,000 apiece for a seat at the table of the World Poker Finals. A handful of finalists will be filmed for the hit show on the Travel Channel, "The World Poker Tour," before the $4 million jackpot is divvied up. "The World Poker Tour" is also just the tip of a massive gambling iceberg now colliding with American culture. By next year, investors say, their Casino and Gaming Television Network will be up and running nationwide, devoting around-the-clock programming to the "fantastic" lifestyle that accompanies gambling. A half-dozen network and cable television shows now feature gambling or Las Vegas as a backdrop. Increasingly, major advertisers, such as PepsiCo and Levi Strauss, use gambling and casinos to hawk their products. Whether you live in Mississippi or Montville, casinos are just a short drive away. A casino trip is like schmoozing with an old friend, where the "Saturday Night Live" crew and "I Dream of Jeannie" greet visitors from trilling slot machines, and Krispy Kremes and Ben and Jerry's are served up around the clock - washed down with all the free booze you desire. "Those who are most hostile to gaming, quite frankly, are dying off. Those who are most interested in gaming are now adults," said Frank Luntz, who surveys attitudes about gambling for the American Gaming Association. He also is working with the creators of the new Casino and Gaming Television Network. "I think the trend is going to continue at the current pace. Every year you are going to see another percent or two more open to gaming - 85 percent of Americans gamble or think it's OK to gamble," said Luntz, a West Hartford native who is a leading pollster for Republican candidates and conservative causes. It's a change that Luntz and others say began picking up steam a decade ago, but accelerated in recent years as gambling imagery became as commonplace as scratch tickets at the corner convenience store. "In the transformation of who we are, gaming `the sin' has become gaming `a legitimate recreational choice.' Gaming is no different than going to a baseball game these days," said Hal Rothman, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "Airports and casinos and shopping malls have become the same place," said Rothman, whose latest book is "Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the 21st Century." "The promise of democracy has become liberal consumerism." A Changing View Steve Lipscomb spent months knocking on doors in Hollywood, shopping his idea for a TV reality show about poker. "They would say, `Oh please, we are never going to do poker,'" said Lipscomb, chief executive officer and founder of "The World Poker Tour," which first went on the air on the Travel Channel last March. The lawyer-turned-filmmaker-turned-producer didn't give up. He'd realized something that television studios didn't: Poker was the cresting wave on a rising tide of gambling. He knew the statistics that showed overwhelming interest in gambling, even among folks who would never set foot in Las Vegas. He knew how the explosion of Indian casinos, commercial casinos and betting over the Internet were taking gambling to areas far from the bright lights of Vegas. Lipscomb's trick with a new television show was to do it differently, with 13 cameras that show every player's cards, giving the event a reality television feel and drawing viewers in. "We believed there was a big market here," said Lipscomb. "People are going to [gamble] for entertainment. Poker itself has always been a part of our lives. ... As soon as our show hit the air, it changed the universe." Lyle Berman understood what Lipscomb was talking about. As chief executive officer of Minnesota-based Lakes Entertainment, which backs and develops Indian casinos, Berman knew the market was ripe for a television program about poker. Berman, whose company is also bankrolling a Massachusetts tribe that would like to build a casino in Connecticut, became the major investor in "The World Poker Tour." The flourishing tour now features televised poker tournaments at more than a dozen casinos from Paris to Mashantucket to the Las Vegas strip. "The vast majority of the public enjoys gaming as a form of entertainment. That's why it is exploding across the United States," said Berman, who along with Lipscomb will attend the poker finals at Foxwoods this week. "The American people voted with their dollars." For Foxwoods, "The World Poker Tour" and its weekly television audience of 4 million to 5 million was like a big Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval beamed into living rooms across the country. Every week the show reminds viewers that gambling is fun, exciting - and as close as your nearest casino hall, which these days isn't that far away. "All of these things help to make our business more mainstream," said Robert DeSalvio, Foxwoods' executive vice president of marketing. "It serves to open up gaming as another option. It's a great night out. You don't have to come and spend a lot of money to have a good time," he said. "The whole moral outlook [toward] gaming as entertainment has changed dramatically." `It Is Not Glamorous' On television, in magazines, in state lottery ads on the sides of buses, the message is clear: Gambling is cool. James Caan stars in the new NBC series "Vegas." Another show, "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," in which Las Vegas and gambling are backdrops to murder, is at the top of the ratings. ESPN, Bravo and the Travel Channel all have or are planning shows about poker. "The first thing that you see is in the media. You have NBC showing that Las Vegas program. Then you have the popularity of `The World Poker Tour.' It seems that gaming and casinos is essentially truly becoming an American pastime," said Robert A. Carlsson, a Chicago banker who is a co-founder of the Casino and Gaming Television Network. "It's not something that is taboo. It is a fun and exciting hobby; just like somebody who goes to a baseball game, people like to go to the casino," Carlsson said. "It seems that we are in the right place at the right time. The timing just couldn't be better." What entrepreneurs like Carlson are salivating over is an often elusive marketing prize: the free-spending male, between 25 and 44 years old. In this case, they're also looking for those who like their cigars, liquor and gambling - or at least the idea of it. "It's as if the pop culture is giving people permission to gamble without really any concern that this is a potentially addictive activity," said Chris Armentano, director of problem gambling for the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. "There are more people addicted to gambling than at any point in the last 50 years." Armentano said the pervasiveness of gambling themes has been "a gradual change. In the grand scheme of things, it's probably been since the late '60s or early '70s when lotteries were legalized again." "It may be that about 30 percent of casino income comes from pathological gamblers," Armentano said. Last year, Connecticut's Indian casinos each earned more than $1 billion in revenues. Both the casinos and the lottery contribute about $2 million annually for programs to treat problem gamblers. There is no money going to survey the impact of gambling on the state. "A significant percentage of the gaming public - about 15 percent of casino patrons - meet the scientific diagnosis criteria for pathological gamblers," Armentano said. "You are talking about people who are ruining their own lives and the lives of people around them, and it is not glamorous." Stocked with racy advertisements, celebrity news and advice for the gaming tables, Cardoza says his new magazine glamorizing the gambling life is "just a regular normal thing" that is "out of the closet now." "It's not unusual to hear people talk about gambling or Las Vegas. People are eating this concept up," Cardoza said. "It's just recognizing what is all over the place." "People just absolutely love to gamble. They love this world around it. They love the darkness. They love putting a little money at risk."
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