Explain the legality of riverboat casinos to me

Factual Questions
1

The discussion of money laundering in Ozark made me think of this question: There are only two states in the US that allow actual casinos on land, Nevada and New Jersey, and in NJ they’re only allowed in Atlantic City as I understand it. Then there are casinos on tribal lands, because they’re considered sovereign. Then in some states there are riverboat casinos.

So, you can’t gamble on land, but it’s legal if you’re on a boat? Why would that be? Is this some holdover from the days when riverboats were actually used for transportation that’s still on the books? Or am I completely off base?

2

I don’t believe it’s a “holdover” of the old days. Someone just decided to carve out an exception to “limit” gambling to particular areas with less risk of spreading throughout the state. The boats were marketed to tourists, and locals were fine taking their money. I think the original idea was that they would only operate for a limited time while away from the dock. I don’t think they ever leave the dock in reality these days.

3

Because the state legislature wrote it into law - it’s really not more complicated than that.

4

Actually, many states allow gambling and casinos on land, though as you mention, they’re mostly restricted to various cities/regions/locations. I mean, tons of people go to Cripple Creek here in Colorado on a weekly to month basis, but it’s far from the boom it once was.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f6b68b4d-b1f0-4f59-9998-d256da2601f5

The above is dated, but I don’t have the time to find a more up-to-date source, though I bet the number has grown. Heck, Colorado has substantially changed it’s laws over time, eliminating rules over certain types of games, raising and then eliminating caps, allowing 24/7 Casino operations…

So, TL;DR: @Munch has it right, it’s a question of what the state and sub-regions chooses to allow, and they can change their minds (or have the voters do it for them, much of Colorado’s legislation came as a result of ballot measures proposed to the voters).

5

FWIW as a teenager in the UK I used to spend time with my older brother in Cambridge and get up to various nefarious activities (almost entirely just drinking and smoking dope, not actually that much variety :wink: ) There were a bunch of hippies who lived in boats on the river and and would sell dope, bootleg tobacco, etc. It was said as they were on the river they couldn’t be raided by the local Cambridge rozzers only custom and excise could. Make of that what you will, it’s firmly in the “stuff people would tell stoned teenagers” school of legal opinion, obviously :wink:

6

Hot Springs, Ark has an interesting story of gambling on land even though it was illegal.

Not a thing anymore. Riverboats are up and down the Mississippi river. Legally, I’m sure.

After Katrina destroyed so many gambling riverboats they changed the law, now they’re actually built on land, just close to water.

7

Yep. I moved from Las Vegas to Missouri just as Missouri started legalizing boats. I was never in the gambling industry, but I followed it pretty closely.

Anyhow, this was pre-internet. The casino conglomerates wanted to grow beyond NJ & NV. Which mean physical casinos in as many other states as possible. In Missouri’s (MO’s) case, that ran headlong into the bluenose bible belters who knew in their bones that gambling was a sin and god would smite MO if it was allowed.

But there had been gambling on riverboats back in the 1800s. Mark Twain, etc. All big parts of MO’s self-hagiography.

Somehow the casino company people paid enough to the legislators to get them to overrule the bible belters and allow casinos. If they were on boats per the historical precedent. That was their cultural / religious fig leaf.

That lasted a few years. But the Mississippi and Missouri rives are actually pretty dangerous waterways. Floods, droughts, shallows, and lots and lots of economically vital but very unmaneuverable barge traffic. Loading a few hundred drunks on a boat and driving a few miles up and down river for no actual sensible reason was seen as dangerous.

So the law was changed. The boats could remain docked, but they had to go on “cruises”, where all gambling was halted and the doors opened for an hour to let people on and off, then the doors closed for 4 hours so nobody could get on or off and gambling was switched on while the boat “cruised”, then the gambling stopped and the doors reopened for another hour so people could get off or on.

Eventually that 4 on 1 off cycle was deemed sooo painful to casino profits that somehow the legislators reneged on that and now the law allowed the doors to remain openall day and much of the night.

Then came some major flooding and a couple boats were swept away or damaged by passing debris. Bad for profits and bad for safety.

So the law was changed again. Now a Missouri casino is built atop a set of huge barges in a flooded pond just slightly larger than the barges themselves. And ~1/4 mile from the river proper. There are pipes that connect the pond to the river, so the barge is floating in actual river water. With valves so they can close off the river water if the river level gets too high or low versus the nearly fixed level they want to keep in the pond. This a enough of a fig leaf to make it 1800s-style riverboat gambling and OK enough to the bible belters.

And as Dave Barry is fond of saying, “No, I am not making any of this up.” It really is this wacky.

Such is life in bible belt gambling law.


And now you know …
The rest of the story …

Good day.

8

Remember the Mississippi (and to a lesser extent the Missouri) are state borders for several states. Attracting out-of-state gamblers was one of the primary drivers for the location and legalization of riverboat casinos. It was viewed as an ideal economic strategy: you capture tax revenue from your neighbors while exporting the “social costs” (like gambling addiction or crime) back across the state line.

9

Good point. There was a certain amount of arms racing going on. And also lots of the casino interests playing the states off against each other.

If you, MO, don’t let us build a casino on your side of the river, good bet the pliable politicians in IL will. And then all your residents will drive over the bridge so the IL government gets al that sweet sweet tax revenue.

10

Not so much anymore , unless you distinguish racinos and slot parlors with video lottery terminals from casinos. One of the reasons that casinos in Atlantic city started closing (six closed between 2014 and 2016 or so) is because NY and PA started opening places where slots were legal and a lot of people didn’t want to travel hours to AC when they could play slots much closer to home.

11

Untrue. Illinois has had legal, non-tribal land-based casinos for decades.

When Illinois first allowed casinos in the 1990s, it was only “riverboats.” The intent, if I remember correctly, was to prevent casinos from having people sit there and gamble all day and all night. The riverboat casinos, initially, were required to “cruise” for several hours at a time, before docking again; patrons were all initially required to disembark at the end of a “cruise,” though there was little to nothing to prevent them from getting back on again.

Some of the boats were on rivers, but others were on man-made ponds; “cruising” consisted of pulling away from the dock by the legal minimum distance, then sitting there.

After a few years, under pressure from the casinos, the state got rid of the cruising requirement, and not too long after, they got rid of the fig leaf entirely, and legalized land-based casinos.

12

And as of last week, New Yorkers don’t even have to leave the city for live table games:

13

It’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide!

14

I just love posts in foreign languages !! :zany_face:

15

LSLGuy’s memory of what happened in Missouri pretty much squares with mine, with a few minor nits.

The whole thing started with the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 which allowed casinos on Native American reservations. As soon as state governments saw all that money pouring in - which the states couldn’t tax - they started looking for ways to get some of it.

Riverboat gambling was thought to be a way to get around anti-gambling laws because “navigable rivers” are technically under the control of the Coast Guard, not the states. The original legislation was drafted that way, but was slapped down by the state Supreme Court. The legislature felt the easiest way to legalize gambling was to take the unconstitutional state law and make it a Constitutional amendment. At some point the Coast Guard was persuaded to advise Missouri that those casinos cruising up and down the rivers for a few miles was a navigational hazard to real boats, and the casino boats stayed docked.