Mississippi Casinos

Casino Overview

Students in Kathleen Wickham's Advanced Reporting class and Brad Schultz's Television Documentary Reporting class at the University of Mississippi took a peek inside how casinos in the state of Mississippi affected the welfare of some of the people and communities in the state.

Cities such as Natchez, Tunica, and Philadelphia were a few of the places where students traveled and conducted in depth sit down interviews with city officials and residents. From those interviews, students were able to work together to collectively produce a full length documentary complete with a web page to present to peers, the Meek School of Journalism, and hopefully, Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

Through their hard work, research and dedication, students discovered that casinos in Mississippi are not what they once were, and set out to find the reason why. They focused on the economic and social effects, history, politics, and casino enforcement among other things to reveal the problems and changes that need to be made within the state of Mississippi concerning casinos.

Students working on the Philadelphia portion did extensive research and interviews. They focused on The Choctaw Indian Reservation, which sits across 10 counties in east Mississippi on 35,000 acres of land. Living amongst eight reservation communities, consisting of Bogue Chitto, Bogue Homa, Conehatta, Crystal Ridge, Pearl River, Red Water, Standing Pine and Tucker, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians consists of nearly 10,000 members.

When the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed, there were over 19,000 Choctaws in Mississippi. Between 1831 and 1833, almost 13,000 Choctaws were removed to the West. Members of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians are descendants of Choctaw individuals who refused to leave and relocate to Oklahoma.

 

Nevertheless, life has since changed over the past 150 years on the reservation. On July 1, 1994, the Pearl River Casino Resort opened its doors. Bringing in on average, $100 million a year, the casino has become a cash cow for the reservation.

Businesses in the Philadelphia, MS area benefit from the presence of the Pearl River Resort and Casino, but no one benefits more from the casino than the Choctaw Tribe who reside on the actual reservation. Local businesses benefit from the tribe, but are regulated under the tribe’s jurisdiction, which causes friction amongst the parties.

 

Local businesses that were around before the casinos opened have been able to keep their doors open due to the influx of tourism the casino has brought into Philadelphia, Miss. The local Walmart upgraded to a Super Walmart as a result of the increase of tourism as well as permanent jobs. Along with local businesses thriving, new business chains rooted themselves in the area as well to benefit from the local economy.

Starting from a life of unemployment and poverty, the Choctaw Tribe worked their way into creating a prosperous life for themselves and those in need around them.

 

Students working on the Tunica, Miss. portion of the story unearthed copious amounts of information as they conducted candid interviews with longtime residents and officials of the small town. Throughout the semester students found that despite a series of setbacks to the gaming industry in Tunica, once the poorest county in the nation, the town has benefitted greatly from the arrival of casinos in 1994.

Many may argue that “rags to riches” is an understatement. Webster Franklin, president and CEO of the Tunica Convention and Visitors’ Bureau, can recall when there was nothing in his town.

 

“In 1994, there was not one stretch of four-lane road in Tunica, Miss.,” Franklin said. “In 1994, there were 20 hotel rooms in Tunica, Miss.”

Things soon changed.

 

“In 1995 we grew to be the largest gaming destination in the country,” Franklin said.

According to him, the gaming industry has created over 2.5 billion dollars in tax revenue, from Tunica alone, to the state of Mississippi over a 20 year time period. In addition, it has built infrastructure, a road system, an airport, an arena, and many other businesses.

Poor decision making and a massive loss of gaming revenue is one of the main reasons Tunica isn’t thriving as it once was. Franklin attributes much of the change to the saturated economy.

 

“When Mississippi allowed gaming in the Gaming Control Act of 1990, Americans could gamble in Atlantic City, and they could gamble in Nevada,” he said. “Today, all but two states in the U.S. have some sort of gaming, and every American is within a 2 and a half hour drive of a casino. That’s why you’ve seen a 1.2 billion dollar a year industry that employed 16,000 people here in Tunica drop to a 600 million dollar industry and employs about 8,000.”

 

The county board recently approved a new 36 million dollar budget but need to find more cuts to balance it. As a result of this decrease in finances the county plans to raise property taxes. Tunica County residents expressed concern over the issues on The Tunica Times Facebook page. Comments ranging from questions about the residences of certain county officials, overstaffing, and anger over the fact that no one on the Board of Supervisors suggested they put away money in case of financial emergencies can be viewed on the page.

 

Casinos were originally brought to Tunica to improve the economy and to create an influx of jobs for Mississippi residents, specifically those in Tunica. At the height of Tunica’s gaming industry, 15,000 people were employed, according to Franklin. Today, 6,970 are employed in the Northern Mississippi casino region, according to the Mississippi Gaming Quarterly Survey.

 

Casinos are turning their focus to the customer’s experience by employing people who can offer them more than a chance to win. The industry is beginning to lean more toward the entertainment side of the business.

 

These employers are hired after graduating from one of four casino dealer schools in the state. The only accredited school in the state is, however, is the Crescent School of Gaming of Gaming & Bartending. They are nationally accredited by the Accrediting Council for Continuing Education and Training, as well as, the United States Department of Education to participate in Federal Financial Assistance programs.

 

“Students who can’t afford the $700 to $10,000 for classes are able to apply and receive financial aid to pay for their training,” Darrel Washington, an admissions associate, said.

 

The schools are also licensed by the Nevada Commission on Post - Secondary Education, the Louisiana Department of Education, the Mississippi Department of Education, and the Mississippi Gaming Commission.

 

The Crescent Schools start new classes every Monday.  These classes run Monday through Friday, morning and night, and there are two options for courses.  Crescent Schools offer a 350-hour Two Game Dealing Program and a 750-hour Comprehensive Dealing Program. The students receive “on the job training” in a room that imitates an actual casino floor. The games covered in the courses include blackjack, poker, roulette, craps, and mini-baccarat.

As time has passed, the gambling industry has increased in the state of Mississippi. The Mississippi Gaming Commission now regulates 28 casinos in 6 different counties. It is the responsibility of the MGC to enforce rules, conduct background checks on casino employees, and investigate injustice within the state gambling industry. 

 

One of the challenges during the early stages of Mississippi gambling was setting rules and regulations for the casinos to follow. The first Director of the MGC, Royal Walker Jr., recalled that the state received guidance in creating these regulations from established gambling institutions in Nevada and New Jersey. 

 

“The spirit was, among law enforcement, that we wanted to do it correctly and right,” Walker said. 

 

One way the MGC encourages fairness of the games within the casinos is by requiring that licensed independent testing labs approve all games. Every slot machine in the state goes through these labs and is tested to make sure they have a theoretical payback of 80 percent. This 

means that during the lifetime of a machine, that machine must pay back at least 80 percent of every dollar a patron spends. Table games are regulated as well but not quite as strictly. 

 

“Games like blackjack, craps, and roulette kind of have their own inherent odds,” Deputy Director of the MGC, Jay McDaniel said. “If a casino wanted to try a variation to that game, that goes to the lab as well.”

 

While we have skimmed the surface of where the casino industry stands today, and why, we encourage you to visit the links provided to each of the individual stories to get a better idea of the big picture. Casinos in Mississippi are not what they once were. Let us show you how this happened.

 

(MarKeicha Dickens and Samantha Rippon )