Stop casino loans
Ontario’s publicly owned casinos are required to ensure that gambling is conducted in a socially and financially responsible manner. Yet a program that offers loans to bettors who run out of money is clearly undermining those aims.
As the Star’s David Bruser reports, the province’s resort casinos have lost $10 million in public money since 2010 on a program that gives house credit to bettors. Worse, experts agree that the program likely encourages problem gamblers to keep on gambling.
“If those debts do not get addressed and there’s no plan to pay them back, it can often keep people in the gambling cycle chasing their losses,” Lisa Pont of the Problem Gambling Institute of Ontario points out.
The solution is simple. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation should immediately stop giving house credit to those who run out of money. That would bring Ontario in line with most other provinces and countries. After all, in offering these bad loans the OLG is not just squandering potential public revenue; it’s also contributing to a public health problem.
While the gaming authority claims “there is a significant vetting process, before granting credit,” by its own admission it doesn’t even know if the unpaid debts were left by customers with problem gaming behaviour.
But according to expert Robert Williams of the Alberta Gambling Research Institute, it’s reasonable to assume gamblers applying for house credit “are likely to be excessive gamblers who have exceeded their limits.”
That’s not behaviour the provincially owned casinos should be enabling.
Yet the OLG continues to defend the program. It says, for instance, that it doesn’t actively promote the service. But clearly those who run out of money have no trouble finding out about it. It says not everyone who applies is eligible and that a significant number of applications are rejected. But again, the gaming corporation bet on more than 600 individuals who were not good for their debts. And it continues to give out loans even though it now knows it will have to use collection agencies to chase down some gamblers — and then, in many cases, still not get paid back, losing millions of dollars in potential revenue.
Perhaps the OLG is forgetting what critics have long pointed out. Though it funnels almost $2 billion annually to the provincial treasury from its various gambling operations, about 30 per cent of that revenue is attributable to problem gamblers. That is public health issue the province has a responsibility to address. The house credit program does the opposite.
These loans are not only a bad business practice; they also promote irresponsible gambling. OLG should stop its house credit program immediately.
The solution is simple. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation should immediately stop giving house credit to those who run out of money