While on my mini jai alai trip last weekend i had an opportunity to speak to one on the members of management about its take on the slots. On condition of anonymity, his take was that the mood is one of cautious optimism, at least at the Miami fronton. The legal challenges have been dropped to the amendment, and all that remains is the local referendum. One concern is that the vote get out and actually PASS that darned thing locally. Historically, like the smoking ban in public buildings, those opposed are better able to marshall support than those in favor. Once THAT challenge has been overcome, the next issue is the actual details of the slots, for example, hours of operation, the number of slots allowed by legislature, the manufacturer that must be used as supplier, the take out (the Indians, according to my source, currently return a shade less than 50% of slot revenue to players on their machines, while the new slots will probably return somewhere between 94% and 98% to the bettors), and who will oversee the operation. the thought was that probably an outside person would run the slot enterprise, to assure professionalism and maximum efficiency, much like outside gaming interests run the Indian casinos. Other areas needing to be determined is length of jai alai season (likely the players would be given a couple of months with no live jai alai, which is probably good for the players and the sport, seasonal, like the old days, and also likely to be affected would be number of performances per week, with less preferred to more (also better for players). Of course, the players would be given a piece of the slots pie, like at Newport. However, the source was pretty emphatic that in the end, live jai alai in Florida would NOT suffer the same fate as in Newport. All in all, I was encouraged by the info and felt i should share it here.
