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Mondays at the Market brings healthy offerings to Public Square

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South WB residents sound off on problem properties at Crime Watch session

<p>We were ready to dish out a healthy dose of criticism to Pennsylvania&#8217;s licensed casino operators for their beef with the state.</p><p>The casinos are complaining the state&#8217;s new iLottery games available online compete with what the gambling houses offer in their brick-and-mortar structures.</p><p>Before we saw the details of the casinos&#8217; argument, we were of the opinion they should stop complaining about the new competition and instead strive to make their venues even more desirable destinations.</p><p>After all, any free-market believer knows that&#8217;s exactly the way it&#8217;s supposed to work, i.e. competing entities in the same sector usually make for better offerings for the consumer. That&#8217;s because competition for the almighty dollar forces everyone to put their best foot forward so they stand a better chance of capturing that dollar over and over again.</p><p>The casinos were demanding that Pennsylvania stop its online lottery games by Tuesday or they would take action, which surely would be in the form of an expensive lawsuit.</p><p>Like we said before, our initial reaction was to grimace at the prospect of taxpayers having to foot the bill to make lawyers rich.</p><p>While we still hope that doesn&#8217;t become the case, when you dig into the casinos&#8217; argument here, you have to admit they have many valid points.</p><p>First, and most glaring, is the fact that registered online iLottery players have to be only 18 to gamble. At a Pennsylvania casino, you have to be 21.</p><p>That alone seems really unfair. We&#8217;d like to hear any state lawmaker who voted for last year&#8217;s gambling expansion try to justify that three-year age difference. It just doesn&#8217;t make sense. Gambling is gambling, whether you&#8217;re out in public or at home in front of a computer screen.</p><p>Next, in setting up iLottery, the state seems to have forgotten about its own law.</p><p>The casinos summed it up like this in their letter to the state Revenue Secretary last week:</p><p>&#8220;In virtually every way imaginable, Lottery&#8217;s iLottery program mimics a casino operation offering simulated casino-style games in direct contravention of (the law&#8217;s) express prohibition on Lottery offering &#8216;interactive lottery games which simulate casino-style games.&#8217;&#8221;</p><p>Indeed, if you go to the iLottery website and play some of the games on demo mode, it&#8217;s readily apparently they look like typical slot offerings you would find on any casino floor.</p><p>And while playing, you even hear the usual jingles and bells associated with slots.</p><p>As the casinos said in their letter, the iLottery games do all they can to replicate &#8220;the look, sounds and feel of slot machines,&#8221; which again would seem to be in violation of what the gambling law tried to forbid. The iLottery is also offering typical &#8220;casino tools,&#8221; like free play and patron-loyalty incentives.</p><p>Another huge point of contention is that state casinos must pay a $10 million licensing fee to start their own online games while iLottery is already up and running and establishing a customer base with seemingly some of the same concepts that are supposed to be reserved for the casinos.</p><p>We would suggest the state halt the games and work with the casinos on a compromise that would keep iLottery as a viable option and allow casinos to establish their own online presence.</p><p>It&#8217;s likely Pennsylvania rushed it with iLottery and created its games in a short-sighted manner.</p><p>The state now needs to regroup and find a way to prevent taxpayers from shelling out big bucks in litigation to defend this misstep.</p><p style="text-align: right;"><em> &#8212; Times Leader</em></p><style>
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<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/web1_MoheganCasino-cmyk.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">The Mohegan Sun Pocono casino is seen in a file photo.</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/web1_MoheganCasino-cmyk.jpg</photo0><caption0>The Mohegan Sun Pocono casino is seen in a file photo.</caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>

Our view: Pa. should stop iLottery games, work with casinos on compromise