The Regular Person’s Guide to the

Maryland Slot Machine Referendum

Assessment of Proponents’ and Opponents’ Claims

Claim 3: Slots in Maryland will keep Marylanders’ gambling dollars from going out of state.

ASSESSMENT:  TRUE, with qualifications

No one knows for sure how much is gambled by Marylanders in other states.  $400 million is considered a good guess.  The availability of slot machine venues in Maryland will recoup some, but not all, of the out-of-state gambling expenditures.  It will also capture some gambling expenditures from other states’ residents. 

Robert E. Carpenter, Associate Professor of Economics at University of Maryland Baltimore County states that it is true that Marylanders travel to nearby states to play slots, but the estimates of how many Marylanders go out-of-state for slot playing aren’t very accurate(1).

Whatever the amount, it’s a tiny share of the state’s overall economy.  The most recent estimate of the Maryland gambling dollars leaving the state comes from a study conducted by the Innovation Group for a track operator (not a disinterested source).  If the 2003 estimate that the Innovation Group uses ($484 million gambling dollars leave Maryland each year) is correct, that means that for each $100 of output produced in Maryland each year, we take 20 cents out of the state to gamble (0.2% of state output).

(1) Carpenter, Robert E. "The Concerned Citizen's Guide to Slot Machine Gambling and Horse Racing in Maryland." University of Maryland Baltimore County Policy Brief (Mar 2007). 11 July 2008 <http://www.umbc.edu/mipar/documents/policy_brief_4.pdf>.

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