Ontario casino adds sports gambling

WINDSOR, Ontario – Sports betting fans in many states no longer have to travel to Las Vegas to place their wagers. Starting Friday, gamblers in Detroit can do it just over the border in Canada.

The opportunity to bet on professional and college sports at Casino Windsor will be a draw that Detroit's three casinos won't be able to match. Gambling on sports is banned in most of the United States, with the majority of opportunities for legal betting in Nevada.

The new attraction is part of a major 400 million Canadian dollars ($360 million) overhaul at Casino Windsor. The Ontario government, which owns the casino, hopes the improvements will help offset a strong Canadian dollar and a provincial smoking ban — two recent factors that have led many of the casino's mostly American patrons to stay home or gamble in the U.S. instead.

The betting starts Friday afternoon at the casino's new Legends Sports Lounge, an orange- and gold-toned bar with a wraparound sports ticker, 36 video displays, big leather chairs and a full food menu. Depending on the season, fans will be able to bet on professional football, hockey and baseball, as well as college football and basketball.

"It's probably going to be the best place to watch the Lions this season," said Casino Windsor spokeswoman Holly Ward.

The lounge will offer four specific games run by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., rather than a traditional sports book, because Canadian law prohibits betting on a single sporting event. Instead, gamblers will bet on the winner, point spread, total score or other statistics in multiple games.

Casino Windsor is the second Canadian gambling venue on the U.S. border to offer the games. Casino Niagara in Niagara Falls, Ontario, has had them for a year.

The opening of the new sports lounge should be a boost for Casino Windsor, which in July laid off more than 300 workers because of declining revenue. The layoffs came less than two months after an Ontario law went into effect banning smoking in all public facilities, including restaurants, bars and casinos. Casino Windsor's competitors in Detroit face no such restriction.

Don Pister, a spokesman for Ontario Lottery and Gaming, said the smoking ban is just one of many factors that has kept American gamblers home. Another big issue is that dollars don't go as far as they once did: The Canadian dollar is worth 90 cents today, compared with an average of 64 cents in 2002. The high price of gas is another problem, Pister said.

While the announcement of the $360 million investment predated the smoking ban, it came after the Ontario government said it would pursue the legislation, which was widely predicted to be a blow to the casino, Pister said.

Casino Windsor opened in an interim facility in 1994 and its current riverfront home in 1998. Competition from the Detroit casinos, which opened in 1999 and 2000, along with tightened border security following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, were already chipping away at its business. After peaking in 2000 at 839 million Canadian dollars, the casino's gaming revenue fell to $425 million last year.

Jacob Miklojcik, president of Michigan Consultants, which has done work for casinos in Detroit and elsewhere, said the smoking ban was a huge blow to Casino Windsor. The sports games won't offset that, he said.

"It will give them something special, something unique in the market," he said. "In the casino business, they've got to run faster and faster just to stay where they are."

The success of the sports betting will also depend on how gamblers take to the games being offered and whether they find them too restrictive, Miklojcik noted.

Chris Parrott, a marketing manager with Ontario Lottery and Gaming, said the sports betting will likely bring a new kind of clientele to the casino.

"This will drive some patronage of sports players. They tend to be male, younger, middle-age. It's a different demographic" than that of the average casino player, Parrott said.

Miklojcik agreed and said that for that reason the lounge would not directly threaten the Detroit casinos.

Parrott said it's reasonable to expect that once people are drawn to the casino for sports betting, they might take part in other games. But as to whether it would significantly drive up traffic at table games and slot machines, he said: "We've never gotten that validated, even from our Las Vegas cohorts."

Besides the sports lounge, the $360 million overhaul announced in early 2005 includes a second hotel tower, which will approximately double the current 389 rooms; a 5,000-seat theater, a new parking structure and renovations of the gaming space. All the projects will be complete by early 2008, Ward said.

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Casino Windsor: http://www.casinowindsor.com/