Australian Casinos 2000 and Beyond

Introduction | Why Gaming Has Expanded so Rapidly | So, who is the current market for all these games of chance and why do they play? | What then does all this mean for the casino of the year 2000 and beyond? | Can this current formula survive the future in Australia? | What though of the internal product of the casino? | What other things will change? | Why is this? | Will this be allowed to continue till the eventual extinction of table games? Is a casino still a casino if it doesn’t offer table games? | Conclusion |

What will casinos of the future look like?

What games will be on offer?

Will the Internet and Pay TV gaming herald significant changes within the casino business?

Will themed Mega-resorts survive the future?

What facilities will be incorporated into the casino properties of the future?

These and so many more questions about the casino of the future may be asked. Crystal ball gazing has never been a strong suit of mine, however, just for fun let me describe what I perceive to be real possibilities in the short and long term. One thing for sure, is that most of what I say about the casino of tomorrow will be wrong! Only hindsight provides 20/20 vision.

Firstly, though let’s take a look at some history.

Wagering has been with us probably since man could first communicate with one another. All of us here probably know about the knuckle bones of sheep being used as primitive “dice” by ancient man and the casting of “lots” in biblical times, but when did gambling take on an organised format with multiple games of chance being offered under the one roof. If we let this, for the moment, be our definition of a casino, then the first gambling house ( casino ) seems to have come into existence in ancient Pompei prior to the first century A.D. Since then we have had the famous casino resorts of Monte Carlo and Baden-Baden and the gambling halls and riverboats of the American Old West to immortalise what for many of us is our perception of what casinos are all about. Popular legal casinos are, however, really only in their infancy. Legalised casino gambling in the U.S. only began in 1931. In the U.K. this did not come into reality until 1968 and in Australia not until Wrest Point Casino opened in Tasmania in 1973. Recent rapid growth in gaming opportunities in the 1990’s has popularised the use of casino facilities and transformed what were once perceived as sleazy mobster run joints into fashionable entertainment complexes.