The Secret World of the Irish Casinos

In what is a neat line in symbolism, the Fitzwilliam Card Club is located in a converted church on Lower Fitzwilliam Street. The place is buzzing when Hot Press visits on a warm spring Thursday evening in April. From the vantage point of a viewing area overlooking the club’s small ground floor, you can observe a group of regulars enjoying a game of poker, as well as other patrons playing games, including roulette and punto banco, which is a big hit with the Chinese community.

TV screens on the walls are tuned to Sky News, which blares analysis of the first leaders’ debate in the British general election. Waitresses occasionally scurry across the floor with a plate of food – you can order dinner in the Fitzwilliam Card Club, but not booze.
Welcome to the world of Irish casinos, which – of necessity, thanks to the lack of regulation – are exclusively private members’ club affairs. Funnily enough, the clientele is much more eclectic than you might expect. When you hear the phrase “private members’ club”, it might initially have connotations of loaded professionals betting enormous sums whilst sipping canapés.
If anything, the Fitzwilliam is actually more proletarian in atmosphere. Club members – of whom there are some 65,000 – range in age from late teens to people in their eighties. The level of skill among players is similarly varied, from relative novices right up to the occasional professional.
Along with The Sporting Emporium on Anne’s Lane (off Grafton Street) and the Macau in Cork, the Fitzwilliam is one of the biggest casinos in the country. From a journalist’s point of view, it’s also one of the most accessible; the club’s managing director, David Hickson (who is also director of the Gaming and Leisure Association of Ireland, GLAI, a representative body for Irish casinos) was happy to meet Hot Press and answer all our questions.
This contrasted sharply with The Sporting Emporium, owned by billionaire stockbroker and part-owner of Celtic FC Dermot Desmond, which declined a request for an interview. The conversation with the woman who answered the phone took a fairly surreal turn – pressed for a reason why the club didn’t want to talk, she responded that she didn’t know why the Emporium didn’t do interviews.
“I don’t really know why people are so guarded,” shrugs Hickson. “There’s nothing to hide. I guess The Sporting Emporium have always just done their own thing.”
In early 2006, the then Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, said that he intended to close off the legal loophole that allowed casinos to operate as private clubs. However, following concerted lobbying by the industry – Desmond, who invested €5.5m in The Sporting Emporium, was among those doing the lobbying – McDowell decided to establish a working group to consider regulation for the legislation of casinos. Thus began the tortuous process of formulating new legislation, which continues to this day. It had been reported in some quarters that a document outlining the government’s plans for regulation would be published at the end of April, but this didn’t come to pass.
In response to a Dáil question from Ruairi Quinn at the end of March, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern stated that his department was “finalising an examination of 70 submissions” from interested parties, and that “the Deputy can expect the publication of legislative proposals in the normal course.” For which, read: it’s done when it’s done.
In the meantime, casinos continue to operate as private members’ clubs. However, they certainly aren’t the only interested parties; bookmakers have been looking to get in on the act, with the bigger chains making the case that they are the ideal venues for casinos, given that the business they are already involved in bears such close relation to other forms of gambling.
One particularly contentious area is Fixed Odds Betting Terminals – also known as FOBTs, or “one-armed bandits” – which are currently outlawed. William Hill has stated that if they aren’t legalised under the new regulations, they may withdraw from Ireland altogether.
David Hickson has been closely involved in the consultative process for the new legislation, and says it has been a fascinating process, noting that many in the political sphere appear to be simply playing to a constituency, rather than objecting to casinos on the grounds of some deeply held moral belief. He observes that one of the areas that has made the legalisation of casinos more palatable to politicians is the simple fact that it could have very good results for “Ireland Inc”.
This becomes apparent as he gives Hot Press a guided tour of the Fitzwilliam. Upstairs for instance, there are two croupiers holding poker games at tables that are completely unattended except for two webcams – the online business that hosts the games is based in Guernsey, and the Fitzwilliam simply takes a fee to operate the games on their behalf. The lack of proper regulation in Ireland means that there is little enticement for such companies to set-up a base in this country.
The tour also provides a fascinating glimpse into the way that casinos operate from a business point of view. All of the games have an underlying mathematical formula which means that – as the old saying goes – the house always wins. Which isn’t to say that the margins can’t be tight – on punto banco, for example, the margin is as low as 0.6 per cent.
Elsewhere, as Hickson talks Hot Press through the club’s watertight membership requirements, exhaustive security arrangements, employment regulations (no croupier is hired with less than five years’ experience), gaming facilities, regular tournament hosting, etc etc, it’s very hard to see what all the fuss is about.
Patrons are uniformly good-humoured and laid-back, and the overall atmosphere is a good deal more welcoming than many a pub this reporter has set foot in. In fact, it’s difficult not to come to the conclusion that, as with head shops, sceptisism about legalising casinos is borne more out of kneejerk reactions – prompted by some bizarre sense of morality – and political expediency than anything else.
There has also been concern expressed about potential money laundering in casinos, although as Hickson himself says, “I’ve never heard of an instance where that has arisen”.
With regard to the worth of the casino sector, what does Hickson reckon was the combined turnover of the industry last year?
“This is a question we ourselves tried to answer in 2008,” he responds. “It was different times then, obviously. The top three would be ourselves, the Sporting Emporium and the Macau. Arguably we’re the biggest in turns of volume, and the Sporting Emporium is possibly the biggest in terms of value. I would estimate around the country, you’re talking turnover of maybe €60m or €70m. In the Fitzwilliam, we had a turnover last year of €18m. But we only keep 18 per cent of that.
“In other sectors of the gaming industry, like the betting sector, they use gross gaming revenue as a measuring tool. So from the €60m, the gross gaming revenue around the country would be around €10m.”
As with other sectors, casinos have been affected by the recession, and Hickson says that revenue in his club was down 30 per cent last year, and is on target to be down by some 50 per cent in 2010.
Looking at one of the big social issues around casinos, how would the Fitzwilliam deal with a person they suspect of having a gambling problem?
“We have what we call a ‘self exclusion’ policy’,” says Hickson. “If someone feels that they might have a problem, or fears that they might be developing a problem, they can bring it to our attention, and we’ll fill out a self exclusion form for them. They have to sign it obviously, and it means that their membership is suspended from the club. We have had a situation where we’ve had to say, ‘Look, maybe you should take a break.’
“It’s a very difficult conversation to broach with people, because you don’t know their business, and you don’t know what they can or can’t afford. Usually, they’re quite grateful, even if they say, ‘No, I’m fine.’ They appreciate that some level of concern was shown. But that’s the beauty of having a club where everybody is a member, as such, and they’ve signed in – at least you know who you are talking to. Each visit is recorded, so you know the number of times they’ve been here. You’ve got some level of information to work off.”