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Why are all casinos on water?

Casinos in many states are located on the water in order to limit their social and geographical impact while still offering a huge income for the state.

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A lot of people keep on asking why casinos are on the water. Casino gambling, to be honest, in the United States, has a very complicated history – a kind of history that aims to balance morals with income. The central locations of gambling in the US are Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and Lake Charles, and there are multiple casinos that exist on Native American tribal lands. There are also many riverboat casinos on the waterways of the nation which started appearing in the first half of the 1990s.

So, Why Exactly Are Casinos On Water?

Casinos in many states are located on the water in order to limit their social and geographical impact while still offering a huge income for the state. For example, states along the Mississippi River as well as the Gulf Coast have chosen water-based instead of land-based ones in order to pull the public opinion towards them. The riverboat casino’s history according to that platform is based on the land’s laws. When the profitability of Nevada’s casinos and those based on Native American land became conspicuous, the other states wanted to enter the game too for the high cash flow. So, riverboat gambling became a balanced solution to the battle between money and social policy.

Gaming On Riverboats – Early History

The earliest steamboats had eventually turned into gambling hotspots because there was not much else to do. That way the passengers passed the time while playing cards. It was obvious that money would be put on the table in these riverboat cruises. Back in the 1800s gambling became very common on Mississippi riverboats. It was not official yet but law enforcement endorsed gambling and it did set the precedence for the concept. In the early 1990s, the first state to legalize riverboat gambling was Iowa and after that several states such as Missouri, Mississippi, Illinois, and Louisiana followed suit shortly. Betting on the boats, at the time, was designed to limit the geographical and economic scope of gambling. The aim here was to receive a good flow of income without increasing the crime rate and encouraging illegal behaviour. These early riverboat casinos, highly restrictive, allowed gambling only to occur during a short cruise – generally which lasted a couple of hours. Gambling was allowed when the boat left the dock and only once it started sailing. Usually, there was a rule that it had to be three miles away from shore before the starting of the gambling. Laws tried hard to keep these gambling cruises similar to the touring journeys which were already taking place ceremoniously on the waterways. At that time, in Iowa, a riverboat casino would be allowed only to sail a maximum of 100 times annually. To find a way to fight social decomposition, states had also set limits on how much exactly could be gambled during each of these cruises. The setting of modest loss limits was also done for its patrons. In most cases, it was set to a value between $200 – $500. The point was that if you put a limit on the money that could be gambled, it would also keep profits small enough. That would keep off the mobs from infiltrating these smaller gambling establishments which ran Las Vegas. However, after the competition increased and the riverboat casino’s popularity and acceptance increased, all these rules started to relax.

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