MILWAUKEE (AP) – Competition for gamblers’ dollars is getting tougher as one Wisconsin tribe seeks to block another from building a casino between Milwaukee and Chicago.
The Midwest gambling market has changed dramatically over the past couple of decades. There are now 36 casinos in Wisconsin and Illinois and 9,000 slot machines in Illinois taverns, truck stops and similar venues, with an untold number of illegal slots in Wisconsin bars, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Sunday.
Casinos “certainly do reach that point where they just start essentially cannibalizing each other,” said Mark Nichols, of the University of Nevada-Reno’s Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming. “You’re seeing signs of that now.”
That helps explain why the Potawatomi tribe is spending millions to block the Menominee tribe from opening an $808 million casino complex in Kenosha.
The Potawatomi fear a casino between Chicago and Milwaukee would siphon many of its Illinois customers. The Potawatomi Bingo Casino in Milwaukee draws about 35 percent of its customers from the Chicago area.
“A slot machine is a commodity, and if you could travel 20 miles, as opposed to driving 55 miles, to get to a slot machine, you’re going to do that,” said John Repa, a national casino consultant who is working for the Potawatomi.
The Menominee face an uphill fight to open a Kenosha casino.
