This study offers a historically grounded analysis of how Las Vegas table games managers constructed occupational identity and navigated institutional change during a period of significant transformation in the casino industry. Drawing on fifteen oral history interviews conducted between 2014 and 2016, the research examines how managers made sense of the shift from informal, relationship-driven management to corporatized, metrics-oriented systems. Thematic analysis reveals three interrelated themes: the transformation of occupational identity and loss of autonomy; the persistence and adaptation of informal power structures (“juice”); and generational tensions in the interpretation of managerial legitimacy. By foregrounding managers’ narratives as situated historical accounts, the study demonstrates that institutional change is experienced not only as a structural process but as a lived negotiation of meaning, authority, and professional identity. The findings contribute to scholarship on organizational change, occupational identity, and the culture of work, highlighting the value of retrospective, narrative approaches for understanding how frontline actors interpret and enact transformation in complex service organizations.
This paper demonstrates how to use state lottery scratch-off tickets as an interactive classroom exercise to explain the binomial distribution and expected value. Students often struggle to comprehend how theoretical probability distributions relate to empirical outcomes. One way to improve student engagement and understanding is by using relatable interactive classroom exercises. The exercise in this paper involves every student receiving a lottery ticket, calculating binomial probabilities and using this information to estimate expected value, average payout, standard deviation, and the number of winners. We then compare the empirical results with what we observe after all the tickets are scratched.
In 2020, men’s professional tennis adopted the so-called “serve clock,” which limited players to taking 25 seconds between points. Prior to the rule change, players could take unlimited time between points, so the serve clock forced many players to play more quickly than they would prefer, a change that, at the time, was thought to give players who possessed an abundance of certain physical characteristics or tennis-specific skills a better chance to withstand the increased physical rigors that the updated game placed on players. We set out to accomplish two tasks in analyzing how professional tennis changed with the implementation of the serve clock. First, we want to update for the serve clock era findings from previous studies that found tennis players who could save or convert break points and win first serve points were relatively better than their competition were more likely to win matches. Second, we want to determine how efficiently betting markets reacted to the implementation of the serve clock. With data from results and odds of 11000 matches from five seasons of professional tennis, we use logit modeling of match results to determine that there was no increase in the rate of return to tennis-specific skills in the serve clock era, that relatively younger and taller players have gained advantages since the rule change occurred, and that betting markets were slow to detect information that allowed for more accurate predictions of matches, leading to a window of time in which larger than normal returns to bettors were available. We believe our findings warrant further investigation of the efficiency of betting markets, especially in periods in which structural changes add to the uncertainty of predicting results.
Academic research can provide important evidence to inform policy debates. Such has been the case with the “gambling studies” academic field, which has largely developed since 1990, when the casino industry began expanding outside of Nevada and Atlantic City, NJ. Recently, sports betting legalization across the United States has been controversial. Despite a significant body of published research analyzing the socioeconomic effects of expanded gambling opportunities, much of the recent public discussion has focused on just three working papers circulated in 2024. These papers have been cited as authoritative in media reports and have been presented before policymakers at the state and federal level. We highlight serious methodological problems in these papers to suggest that flawed research can lead to bad policy, and that the current sports betting debate has parallels to the 1990s debate over the “social costs of gambling.”
Recent Australian government inquiries into casino, club, and hotel activities identified significant money laundering, and/or junket and links to organised crimes, and governance failings. The findings of two Royal Commissions determined that casinos in Sydney and Melbourne were not suitable entities to hold a gaming licence. Regulators gave these casinos two years to address concerns raised during these inquiries. One recommendation, supported by media reports and public health advocates, suggested the implementation of cashless gambling, that is, the use of non-cash forms of gambling (e.g., digital wallets, QR codes, or gambling debit cards). Others have expressed concerns about counterproductive or unintended consequences of tokenization of money and difficulties in monitoring expenditure. Although potentially useful as an anti-money laundering initiative, the effective use of cashless gambling as a harm minimisation/responsible gambling initiative requires careful consideration of its architecture, that is, the structure, processes and oversight of its implementation and operation. In this paper, we describe the complexities of cashless gambling and highlight relevant issues that need to be addressed. The findings of the various inquiries also raise serious questions regarding the proportion of funds commonly ascribed to individuals with gambling disorders. We conclude that key stakeholders (e.g., government, industry, financial and academic) need to collaborate to develop an optimal cashless gambling structure that achieves its intended objectives for responsible gambling over and above anti-money laundering.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, most sectors of the various gambling industries in the United States were showing signs of stagnation. Over the last few years, these industries have seen mergers between horse racing tracks, between horse racing tracks and casinos to form “racinos”, and between casino companies. Many gambling facilities and racetracks have closed and have been sold to developers to be used for other purposes. An industry “shakeout” is occurring, and there appears to be a trend toward greater industry concentration as consumers are showing less and less interest in gambling in general. This has been partially fueled by stagnation of disposable personal income over the last 20 years or so. Consumer preferences and attitudes also seem to have changed regarding horse racing and gambling. Sports gambling and the expansion of online gambling do not appear to have offset negative trends. These current conditions are somewhat a reversal of past fortunes in that in the 1980s and 1990s the opening of a casino in a city often was considered a plus for local economic development. As more consolidation and establishment closures occur, the impact on various local communities and state governments must be examined regarding lost jobs, lost local and state tax revenues, and lost tourism. This paper is an attempt to assess these developments.
Gambling on professional sports is becoming more popular across the country as states legalize the practice, causing more participants to seek out profitable betting strategies. A number of academic papers over the past 40 years have found profitable gambling rules on National Football League games. We show that six of these supposedly profitable strategies identified previously in the literature fail to hold up over other time frames. The betting market in football is not inefficient with respect to the situations covered by these six strategies and the rules are not long-run profitable.
Football betting markets can be used to test the Efficient Market Hypothesis. This paper adds to literature in this field by investigating the effect of an exogenous shock to the English football betting markets. We analyse whether market expectations were correctly priced during the Covid-19 induced ghost game period. We find that the loss of home advantage is not fully incorporated into the betting odds. Hence, we find evidence of a violation to the semi-strong form of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. Given our analysis we are able to demonstrate some simple betting strategies that bettors could have used to yield high profits. Moreover, we carry out robustness checks with five additional betting providers and produce concordant findings.
This paper uses data from 25 World Series of Poker Circuit no-limit Texas Hold’em high-stakes multiday tournaments comprised of 17,852 entries to analyze changes in player rank outcomes based on chip stacks and prior-day rankings. High-stakes poker tournaments are comparatively expensive to enter and thus attract a higher percentage of skillful poker players. We find several interesting results. First, players that make it to the final table have 50% more chips than the average chip stack, after the first day of play. Players that finish in the money, but do not make it to the final table, have roughly the average chip stack and players that finish out of the money consistently have around half of day one’s average chip stack. We also found that for our sample, the players who made it to the final table were, on average, in the 70th percentile after day one. Only 48 out of 225 players (21.33%) came from the bottom half of the distribution after day one to the final nine players. We also evaluate the Independent Chip Model (ICM) and compare the results predicted by the model to the empirical results in our tournament data. We find that ICM does a fairly good job predicting overall results; however, players with the top 25% chip stacks on the final day of the tournament tend to moderately outperform their ICM expectations largely at the expense of the players with medium chip stacks. Shorter stacks, on the other hand, come closest to realizing their mathematical expectation.
The game of blackjack involves in-game actions that can materially affect the possible outcomes and/or their probabilities. In theory, with data from enough hands and decision points, researchers and gambling operators should be able to develop player profiles and then use those profiles to detect increased risk of gambling harm. However, it is currently unclear how much blackjack play is needed to accurately classify players. As a preliminary experiment, we separated blackjack hands into nine classes, and then proposed a total of twenty play patterns (“heuristics”) across hand classes to operationalize players’ strategies. We used our heuristics as components to construct 506 blackjack-playing bots to simulate human play. We then created a program that would read a session’s data and attempt to determine which bot generated that data. We found that for more infrequently occurring hand classes (e.g., pairs, soft hands), even 30 shoes of play were not enough to accurately determine the identity of a bot. With more frequent hand classes (e.g., hard hands), we could only accurately identify bots that played consistent strategies within 30 shoes. Results suggest that efforts to use blackjack hand histories and profile-fitting to generate markers for gambling harm might require simpler classification systems, or otherwise be limited to highly involved blackjack players.
The current study examines the congruence, or lack thereof, of the relationships as identified in two earlier studies: one that addressed sports-based sponsorship and the other that focused on sports gambling. Study one identified a general model of the sports sponsorship environment based upon an array of benefits derived by four categories of beneficiaries that are directly impacted by the sponsorship of a sports entity (i.e., team, athlete, sports venue, and so on). The four categories of beneficiaries were identified as sponsors, sports, spectators, and society-at-large. The original model further examined the interactions among the four categories of beneficiaries while delineating 12 directional linkages and 159 potential benefits. The second study focused on the results emanating from a recent Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruling that declared the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) to be unconstitutional. That ruling allowed American gambling organizations to become more involved in sports betting, and consequently, they have become engaged in the sponsorship of a variety of sports entities. A similar analysis to the one used in traditional sports sponsorship documented 14 groups of beneficiaries and 201 benefits. The current study, which delineated 215 benefits, extends the previous research by integrating these complementary streams within an overarching sponsorship model. Results demonstrate that the sponsorship environment is more complex than previous research has shown, and several contributions that are both theoretical and managerial in scope are articulated.
Research consistently demonstrates the financial advantages of robust diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in businesses. However, implementing these programs has been slow, and the emergence of anti-DEI initiatives poses challenges for private companies and their employment practices. As companies reassess their DEI initiatives, understanding customer perspectives on these issues becomes crucial. To address this need, this study focuses on customer perceptions of DEI within the in-person casino environment. Previous studies in the casino industry have primarily concentrated on workforce diversity, disregarding the critical aspects of equity and inclusion that profoundly impact both customers and employees. Additionally, no prior research has explored customer perceptions of diversity, equity, and inclusion within casinos or the extent to which customers prioritize these elements in their decision-making. This research aims to fill this gap by examining the importance that casino customers attach to diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as the key factors influencing their perceptions and decision-making. By evaluating the impact of DEI on customer behavior and spending patterns, casinos can make informed decisions about resource allocation, devise effective marketing strategies, and develop products and services that align with customer values. To measure customer perceptions, a novel index was developed to assess the observed level of diversity, equity, and inclusion within casinos.
Since the publication of the Reno Model in 2004, stakeholders have grappled with the best way to promote responsible gambling and its essential features. While the Reno Model prescribed a broad set of interacting goals and activities across multiple stakeholders, to date, an in-depth consideration of the specialized role of gambling-industry businesses in promoting responsible gambling remains to be realized. This type of deep dive into industry-oriented responsible gambling is important to accomplish because the gambling industry has unique responsibilities for developing safer gambling environments. Therefore, this position paper provides a strategic framework that describes principles and practices to guide gambling-industry businesses in the implementation of contemporary systems-based responsible gambling initiatives. The foundational systems-based responsible gambling approach sets forth responsible gambling principles for core gambling-industry business units including customer experience, public messaging, data science, game development, regulatory affairs, and the executive level, as well as five main practices to be applied to each business unit: evaluation, research, needs assessment, needs-based training, and technical assistance. This approach is flexible and can be adjusted to reflect different organizations’ unique structures and needs.
This study examines 3,270 races of the Japanese thoroughbred racetrack betting market. It finds that market efficiency improves with the sales volume and deteriorates with the number of horses on a race and an increase in less-informed bettors.
Performance compared to expectations is important in evaluation of Chief Executive Officers, managers, and coaches. In many industries, expectation metrics are difficult to estimate or obtain. In professional sports, however, futures markets exist for season performance. In many sports, such as the NFL, there exists a wagering option on season win totals. A season win total is an over/under bet on the number of wins a team will have in a given season. We utilize this market to calculate actual versus expected performance and include this in a model of coach retention. The issue of treatment discrimination of minority coaches is explored.
Casinos use Cash (Free Play), Direct Mail and E-Mail Blasts, Buffet coupons, and Hotel Marketing among other offers in order to retain their loyal customers and also to invite new players to join their loyalty club. This study assessed the effectiveness of such promotions in terms of generated gaming revenues. Data from two mid-size casinos are used for this purpose. The method of Bayesian general linear models is used to determine the effects of various promotions on gaming revenue streams. Several promotion types were shown to have a significant impact on gaming revenue streams.
While the EuroMillions game has been in operation since 2004, there has been limited analysis of its demand and no research on potential power imbalances within the organization and their dependence on jackpot size. This study utilizes EuroMillions sales data at the country level to examine the distribution of market power within the organization and its historical trends. Market concentration is evaluated using the Herfindahl Hirschman index (HHI), and the relationship between the HHI and jackpot size is assessed using sales data at the draw level for all game operators. Findings indicate that power imbalances exist within the EuroMillions organization, partly due to the impact of the jackpot size, which appears to stimulate demand for EuroMillions tickets more in certain countries than in others.
Fallacy bias is salient in gamblers’ minds and plays a crucial role in motivating gamblers to bet. The bias stems from people’s misconception that independent outcomes are autocorrelated. It makes an indirect but significant contribution to the revenue of casinos. However, from the perspective of corporate social responsibility, casinos should not indulge the bias. To strike the balance, casino practitioners need to understand the triggering factors of fallacy bias and whether the bias varies with gamblers’ characteristics. While gamblers’ racial difference in fallacy bias remains unknown, this study adopted non-participatory observation and analyzed the bets of 501 non-Asian and 206 Asian Roulette gamblers in an Australian casino. Results showed that non-Asian players had a stronger tendency towards gambler’s fallacy than their Asian counterparts. The influences of length and frequency of the latest outcome on the betting decisions did not vary with race. The findings provide useful implications for casino management.
In June 2021 we conducted a study to evaluate the potential for casinos to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels by addressing changing perceptions and priorities of their customers. Following this study, we have seen rapid changes in the perception of COVID-19 and, in turn, shifting customer behavior. Therefore, a follow-up national survey of US casino customers was conducted to better understand if pandemic related issues are still a concern, and, if not, what more can and brick and mortar casinos do to get customers back. The results of this follow-up study indicate dramatic changes in COVID related perceptions and shifting priorities of casino customers, offering implications and opportunity for casino operators.
In this paper the author will discuss the main inefficiencies in the 4 American major leagues of football (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and USA), proposing a betting scheme, which outperforms the market with consistency over the past 9 Seasons (from 2012/2013 up to 2020/2021). Analysing the available data it was discovered how “Home advantage bias” and “Championship favourite advantage bias” play a big role in these championships and, by betting only on events, in which they were predicted favourable betting odds, it was possible to obtain an average return of +6.87% over 567 matches, using average bookmakers coefficients available on the market. The results are particularly significant, since, at least to our knowledge, there were no similar strategies available, which could guarantee such a big positive outcome for the leagues presented.
