[ Home ]

[ Slots News ]

Lottery Up, Slots Down in CT

It’s bad news for slot machine operators in Connecticut. Slot revenues are falling. There can be no doubt that the skyrocketing costs of gas and the poor state of the national economy are to blame, but there are, unfortunately, two factors over which the struggling industry has very little control. In New England, as in pretty much all parts of the United States, the economy is in turmoil. Players are finding themselves with less and less free income to spend on slot machines, and are turning instead to a more convenient and inexpensive alternative – the lottery.

Slots are down and the lottery is up in Connecticut. Players are showing a disinclination to travel to casinos for the privilege of playing money-guzzling slot machines. Instead, many are going right up the street to their local grocery store or gas station to play the lotto. The state’s lottery operation vice president of sales and marketing was optimistic about revenue. Paul R. Sternburg told press that he though the lotto industry was “going to have another good year.”

Unfortunately, the lotto boom is not equal to the slot machine bust. Increased lottery revenues will only go so far towards filling the massive void in the state budget left empty by diminished slot revenues. Connecticut gets a full quarter of all casino slot machine income in taxes, and has seen that chunk of change drop by almost twenty million dollars. The increase in lottery sales has only amounted to four million dollars extra in the same time period. Understandably, the state isn’t really in a position to try and exploit this trend – it would be in “bad taste” to promote gambling during a recession, acknowledged one state official.

Back to September 2008 Archive.