Bingo Card Madness
December 5, 2005
Lions Club President Sharon Robidoux said Tuesday the club has assumed full management of the bingo operation, including hiring a manager. The club has not decided what, if any, other ways it will raise money, Robidoux said. The Lions Club expects a decline in the amount of money it will be able to donate to charity, Robidoux said. "We are aware there will be a dramatic difference, but we don't know how much," she said.
Last week, hall manager Roxie Taylor said that Hilltop would suspend its paper as well as e-bingo operations because of questions about the operation of the session games by a for-profit company called the Dream Team. Besides banning e-bingo machines, Burke's ruling declared that only a nonprofit organization may conduct a bingo game -- the traditional kind -- and that no one may profit from the operation. In fiscal year 2003, the Lions Club paid Dream Team $248,000 to run the bingo operations, which grossed $2.4 million, of which it donated $22,361, or 0.9 percent, to its mission of serving the visually handicapped, diabetics and needy, according to its most recent Form 990 filed with the Internal Revenue Service. The rest went to payouts for winning players, Dream Team, and the club's savings.
Some of the e-bingo establishments that shut down their operations last week were for-profit companies that donated some of the proceeds to charity. Troopers Bingo provides between 30 percent and 40 percent of the Drum & Bugle Corps' operating budget, but that declined in recent years with the rise of e-bingo, Krum said. Meanwhile, Hilltop Bingo has resumed its traditional bingo every night except Tuesday, according to a message on its answering machine. Hilltop Bingo leased Fast Action Bingo machines from the Phoenix-based Dream Games of Arizona, which also supplied machines for the Fast Action halls that funneled some proceeds to Casper Youth Baseball.
Open, nonelectronic The Troopers Drum & Bugle Corps opened its hall in 1994, Krum said. Back then, a few other organizations besides veterans' groups offered bingo, and none offered e-bingo, he said. The Troopers, Krum said, briefly offered e-bingo machines with a software program that would be considered technologically antiquated now. But the Troopers abandoned it because of questions of the machines' legality. "We didn't want to set a precedent," he added. The nonprofit Troopers has always run its bingo operation under its authority, Krum said. "We never had a third (management) party," he said.
Many of the players were talking about it in bingo terms and where they would play, Krum said. "They were talking about what directly affected them," he said. The conversations about e-bingo Krum heard, he said, crossed the spectrum from people who were glad that the e-bingo places shut down because of the addicting effects of the game's speed, to those who don't believe there's a difference between the electronic and paper versions and that they should be allowed to play both. "I think it's opinion based on what their desire is rather than their opinion of it being right or wrong," he said. Not everyone who played the electronic version of the game will flock to Troopers Bingo to play traditional session bingo, Krum said. However, he expects many who played traditional bingo before e-bingo will return to the paper version. "People who enjoy (traditional) bingo will be here," he said.
"For a majority of people, it's very much a family atmosphere," Krum said Tuesday. Last week, players jumped to attention, though not as fast as the Troopers themselves would, when they learned that the electronic version of the game was illegal. That prompted more people than usual, about 150, to drive to 535 N. Beverly and play on Friday. Troopers Bingo normally attracts about 100 players a night -- it's closed on Wednesdays -- but Krum expects that average to rise slightly after 1st District Judge E. James Burke of Cheyenne ruled last week that e-bingo machines fall under the state's definition of gambling machines.
