New report from UMass Amherst SEIGMA team examines a decade of casino gambling in Massachusetts

A comprehensive new report finds having three casinos in Massachusetts has translated to millions of dollars in revenue, with crime and problem gambling rates largely staying the same, among many other findings.  

Calling it “the largest research study” of its kind in the world, Dr. Robert Williams led a presentation more than 10 years in the making when he addressed the Massachusetts Gaming Commission this month.

When casino gambling was legalized in 2011, the state took the long view in studying future impact, commissioning an investigation that would become known as the Social and Economic Impacts of Gambling in Massachusetts study or SEIGMA at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Williams is a co‐principal investigator for the project and laid out findings Thursday dating to 2013 and touching on data from “55 interim reports and academic publications,” according to SEIGA.

Front-and-center – changing attitudes when it comes gambling availability both pre- and post-casinos.

“We surveyed 9,500 people in 2013, prior to any casinos opening, and you can see that, actually, people were pretty content with no casinos,” he said. “Now, to be fair, they knew at that time that casinos were likely coming to the state, so that might influence that sort of accepting attitude, they’re fine with what currently existed. But it is interesting that in a follow up population survey in 2021 – now, the overwhelming majority think that current availability [for] gambling is too widely available.”

Over the course of eight years, respondents who said gambling was too widely available went from 16 percent to 68 percent – a change Williams says may have been influenced by the arrival of online sports betting in most of New England around the time of the follow-up study.

Massachusetts didn’t legalize sports betting until 2022.

Also notable – nearly half of the 2021 respondents (46 percent) said casino impact was neither harmful nor beneficial, up from 19 percent in 2013.

Then, there’s the matter of problem gambling.

“A big concern was problem gambling, and we have some pretty unequivocal results here, and the result is that it’s, both statewide and host and surrounding community-level, there’s no significant changes in problem gambling or most related indices,” he said.

The report noted a small increase in problem gambling between 2013 and 2018, rising from 2.5 percent to 3.8 percent before seemingly stabilizing and shrinking slightly in 2019. 

One observation, Williams pointed out – the increase likely reflected relapsing problem gamblers emerging with the casinos opening, as opposed to new problem gamblers being created.

At the same time, demand for gambling addiction treatment appeared to decrease, though 2022 and ’23 both saw significant spikes in the use of a helpline service. The more than 560 calls reported in 2021 were dwarfed by some 1,300 the following year, and more than 3,100 the year after that.

“That almost certainly has nothing to do with casinos,” the co-PI told the MGC. “That all the other trends were down, this almost certainly has something to do with sports betting.”

Other casino impacts highlighted included traffic and criminal activity.

Studying the casinos’ host communities and surrounding areas, the data indicated casinos definitely led to increases in traffic.

Springfield saw its traffic volume increase 12 percent from 2014 to 2019, before dipping significantly during the pandemic. However, by 2022, the volume hadn’t returned and was even lower than before MGM Springfield’s groundbreaking.

The report also found no significant change in crime rates and, in fact, property crime appeared to decrease in host communities. However, all three casinos “became one of the highest locations for crime and calls for service in their community,” according to the report. 

Revenue-wise, “Total Gross Gaming Revenue from all three casinos has been between $1.1 and $1.2 billion per year in the last three years,” the report says. But as for where various expenditures come from, there’s cause for concern, Williams says.

“What this shows is that, in 2013, that at-risk and problem gamblers accounted for 74 percent of the casino expenditure, and that has increased to 90 percent in 2022 and that is the major concern,” Williams said, speaking over a slide showing the percentages of casino revenues derived from problem and at-risk gamblers.

Among the recommendations made at the end of the study, researchers called for a reduction on the casino industry’s reliance on at-risk and problem gamblers, noting that 90% of revenue coming from just less than 10 percent of the population is “much too high.” 

Suggestions included sending automated alerts to gamblers using reward cards or playing online when “behavior escalates,” restricting ATM access, and implementing mandatory pre-commitment of gambling limits.

The full study, including more statements from the SEIGA research team, can be found here.