Casinos complain the taverns are unfair competition
Clark County, Nevada Commissioner Tom Collins has proposed an idea that could finally resolve the issue of bars and taverns that make too much of their revenue from gaming: fewer slot machines.
Currently, the venues are permitted to have up to 15 machines. A 2011 state law requires that gaming revenue be “incidental” to revenues from food and alcohol sales.
In recent years, the casino industry has complained that some taverns like those in the popular Dotty’s chain have been just thinly disguised slot parlors.
Due to those complaints, commissioners created legal blueprints for the bars, specifying how much square footage must be devoted to kitchens and bars. According to the Las Vegas Sun, commissioners never fully defined what they meant by “incidental,” leaving a loophole that can be misinterpreted and exploited.
“Rather than trying to establish kitchen size and square footage size and the number of tables and chairs,” Collins said, the county should consider reducing the number of slot machines a bar is allowed to have from 15 down to as few as five.
