Mark Binker of the News & Record has done a great job following the Video Poker / Sweepstakes saga as the laws went thought the NC General Assembly. Round Two is over December 1.
As one player commented, the payouts seemed to have dropped or lessened over the past few weeks. Which seems to be reasonable as the game owners have until December 1 to recover their investments. As I reported earlier, these games never really gave their payout info – there wasn’t any auditing. You paid, you played and may be you won; but the house always won.
There was NEVER any sweepstakes part of this operation and that was the problem. With a sweepstakes, there will be so many entries and after a period of time, a winner. There are instant winners; but visitation restrictions prevented entries at the rapid fire that the video sweepstakes offered. There was never a “Game #” to make you a unique player against others in the game.
This whole thing got started because private organizations are looking for creative and entertaining ways of raising money. Bake Sales and Car Washes just don’t generate excitement or revenue today. The problem is that individually, these organizations could not pull off a big fund raising event – combine efforts and the money flows. We will see this again. The money is too easy.