You wouldn’t be blamed for being out of breath.
Keeping up with the history of legalized gambling is difficult on the best days. Lately, it’s been just about impossible.
The United States Supreme Court’s decision last week to overturn a law that limited single-game sports betting to Nevada has added nothing less than a new chapter into America’s rapidly expanding book of gambling.
And the thundering scandal at Wynn Resorts has been nothing less than game changing for the company and, perhaps, even the entire industry.
While it’s not intended to keep up with the latest headlines, “All In: The Spread of Gambling in Twentieth-Century United States,” is a worthy addition to your gaming industry library. Edited by Jonathan D. Cohen and David G. Schwartz, the collection’s 10 essays are divided into five generally self-explanatory parts: Policing, Promoting, Proliferating, Praying and Playing. Within those sections, readers will find some compelling insights and fascinating historical nuggets.
As a lifelong baseball fan, I was fascinated by Seth S. Tannenbaum’s entertaining and informative “‘The Ever Watchful Eye of the Magnate’ – Policing and Ballpark Gambling in the Twentieth Century.” While even casual fans have likely heard of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, there was more than ample action in ballparks throughout the Major Leagues. And, in those days, baseball, horse racing and boxing were favorites not only of sports fans, but of gamblers and bookmakers great and small.
It’s a reminder that the country has been gambling far longer than it has been gambling legally. There are plenty more in the book.
Of the two academics who edited the book, Schwartz may be better known as the well-versed fellow who directs the Center for Gambling Research at UNLV and edits the Gambling Series at the University of Nevada Press.
As a guy who grew up in the newspaper racket in Las Vegas and spent more than three decades at the Review-Journal, I was especially intrigued by the essays on the promotion and marketing of gambling culture and casinos generally at a time Nevada was an island of legalization unto itself.
As none other than the late Las Vegas Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun writes in Larry Gragg’s piece “Avoid Advertising the Obvious,” the Las Vegas “Chamber of Commerce has a big selling job to do on the outside world or else we will get a reputation of being a sinkhole of iniquity.”
Gragg notes, “Since its formation in 1911, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce had worked diligently to create a more positive image of the city, attempting to counter the idea that Las Vegas represented a mecca of sin built on a foundation of wide-open gambling.”
The evolution of the chamber helped change the perception of Las Vegas to the outside masses, but it didn’t happen overnight and transcended the promotion of the place as a “frontier town.”
One of the stars of ginning up good publicity was the incredible Steve Hannagan, whose history of conjuring major headlines for everything from Miami Beach to the Indianapolis 500 – and especially the skiing wonderland of Sun Valley, Idaho. But there are plenty of others. Some worked inside the resorts, others toiled for the chamber or the Las Vegas News Bureau. And an army of other promoters wore the hats of newspaper reporter for the Sun and Review-Journal. Boosterism has always been an element of the Las Vegas news trade.
The saving grace of “All In” is its honest treatment of the controversial history of legalized gambling. It’s not a knock on the business, far from it, but it’s an acknowledgment of the cultural, financial and moral questions its growing status raises. That makes it a valuable addition to the library of anyone who is fascinated by the corporate models and motivations inside the casino business.
“Understanding the role of casino companies in the expansion of gaming in the United States is important because it provides a more balanced view of that growth,” Schwartz writes in his essay, “No End in Sight.” “…Unlike sports betting, casino gambling had a large and motivated cadre of evangelists who ultimately succeeded in spreading casinos from coast to coast – driving their stock prices that much higher in the process.”
And now it appears that even sports betting, that last pariah subset in the gaming subculture, is about to emerge from the shadows at last.
“All In” is thought-provoking and helps us better understand a history that seems to be growing and changing right before our eyes.
Contact John L. Smith at jlnevadasmith@gmail.com. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith.
