Look, I can understand a casino’s management team banning certain things under their own roof. Banning nudity while playing slots? Sure, makes sense here – maybe not everyone wants to see you in your birthday suit. Banning smoking while playing slots? I can see why some casinos don’t allow this if the majority of their customers don’t want to breathe in second-hand smoke (and why other casinos might not ban it if the majority of their customers are, in fact, smokers). But banning filming? Filming? Seriously? Who’s it hurting? Aren’t we generally supposed to be able to do what we want, so long as we’re not hurting anyone? Are they scared we’re going to study the video after and figure out how to cheat at slots? Do they really want to throw away huge, free, promotion opportunities by not allowing slot channels to promote their casinos? Let’s examine some of these potential reasons below, and I think you’ll quickly see why they are all very, very dumb.
Indeed, it’s pretty dumb to think that any gambler on the casino floor would care if the dude next to them is taking a video of a computer screen. Nobody is getting hurt. (In fact, you might actually catch some hilarious surprises from time to time, if you’re filming.) So, what’s the casino’s problem if I want to take a video of the game I’m playing? Do they think I’ll drop my ‘camera’ (iPhone) on someone’s foot? It just makes no sense at all. In public spaces, there’s a general precedent in this country that I’m supposed to be free to go about my business, as long as I’m not hurting anyone. Granted, casinos are private property, and can legally do something like this without having to worry about any consequences from limiting someone’s ‘freedom,’ but why would they want the negative PR of doing so without good reason? The answer: They just aren’t thinking it through.
It’s not like I can comb through hours and hours of slot videos, and figure out the secret to a computer’s Random Number Generator, and then come back and game the system for jackpots. Not even the people who programmed and built these slot machines can cheat on them. I can’t have a friend signal to me when a ‘machine is cold,’ and then rush over to it right before it ‘pays out.’ That’s not how these things work, and that kind of thinking doesn’t make any sense.
But the thing that makes the least sense is the free promotion that casinos miss out on by banning slot filming. For a long time, in Las Vegas, The Cosmopolitan was one of the only casinos that allowed slot filming, and you know what happened to them? Lots of people, including me, filmed countless slot videos at The Cosmo, generating millions of views for their casino, encouraging others to play slots there too. Isn’t that what a casino ultimately wants? Lately, it’s been great to see other casinos loosening their filming policies too. I was recently allowed to live stream at Caesars, Flamingo, and Harrah’s, and this led to hundreds of thousands of people seeing my videos in those casinos.
So, I guess it’s not all bad news, anymore. People are slowly starting to understand. New filming is slowly being allowed. More and more casinos are eventually starting to warm to the idea, because they are finally realizing that if an activity doesn’t hurt anyone, and if that activity can’t help a person cheat, and if that activity actually helps to promote a casino, then that must mean that, of course, banning such an activity is just plain dumb. I’m hoping the remaining casinos will soon wake up too, so we can all get our slot on anywhere we want to.
too, so we can all get our slot on anywhere we want to.