Slot Machines or Bingo Machines?

There is a debate going on across the country, but most recently in California, where lawmakers are trying to decide if electronic bingo games are simply just hyped up versions of the game – or if they are slot machines and therefore illegal in the state of California. Recent pending legislation from the state capital says that they are simply electronic games, but the localities disagree.

Many of the local governments are making the games illegal, as they feel they are nothing more than slot machines. They say that when someone is standing in front of an electronic game, where there are three reels, and you win if there are three identical objects, then you are playing a slot machine. However, officials say that the bingo game is going on to the side and that the wheels, etc. are just “window dressing” and they are not slot machines.

Businesses say that if they are considered illegal, they are going to start losing even more money to the Indian casinos, and to bingo parlors in other jurisdictions, where they are still allowed to operate the machines. They say that with the new electronic games being taken away they will see a loss of millions of dollars. They quote figures that say that the year before last they had $44.3 million come in from bingo – and that last year receipts were only $36.6 million, because people are being drawn away from classic bingo games.

They say they need the electronic forms of the game to keep the interest of those who play, and that they have to become more like the casinos to keep the revenue coming in. They say that two of their bingo parlors closed last year, and without the electronic version of the bingo machines they will see many more closures this year.

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