Casinos: An Introduction - The Historical And Current Status Of Casinos

Gambling was illegal for most of the nation's history. This did not keep casino games from occurring, sometimes openly and with the complicity of local law enforcement, but it did keep them from developing into a legitimate industry. Even after casino gambling was legalized in Nevada in 1931, its growth outside that state was stifled for decades. It was another forty-five years before a second state, New Jersey, decided to allow casino gambling within its borders. Even that move did not open a floodgate of casino gambling.

As Atlantic City, New Jersey, began permitting casinos during the late 1970s, a groundswell of change was about to sweep the country from an unlikely source—Native American tribes. A string of legal victories allowed Native American tribes to convert the small-time bingo halls they had been operating into full-scale casinos. Suddenly, other states wanted to get in on the action. Between 1989 and 1996, another nine states authorized commercial casino gambling—South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Mississippi, Colorado, Louisiana, Missouri, Indiana, and Michigan.

Based on estimates from gambling industry trade groups and media reports, U.S. casinos had revenues around $45 billion in 2003. The research firm Christiansen Capital Advisors estimates that commercial casinos and racinos accounted for approximately $29 billion of this total. Tribal casino revenues are estimated by various sources as ranging from $15.9 to $16.7 billion in 2003.

Approximately eight hundred casinos were in operation nationwide in 2003. Just over half (443) were commercial operations, while the remainder were tribal operations.

In 2004 commercial casinos operated in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, and South Dakota, while Native American casinos operated in twenty-eight states. Besides the full-scale casinos, there were racetrack casinos, or "racinos," in eight states—Delaware, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, and West Virginia. These facilities are actually racetracks that also offer slot machines.