Just recently, I went to Alley Katz Bowling Alley in Westerly, Rhode Island. Keno is quite prevalent over there with many bars, restaurants, convenience stores, grocery stores, pharmacies, and golf clubs selling tickets to play keno and bingo whose results can be viewed on television screens.
In keno, players select numbers and try to match them with numbers randomly generated between 1 and 80. Players who chose more correct numbers in this game of chance receive a bigger payout. Game structure and frequency of drawings can also affect the payouts.
In Rhode Island, players chose between one and ten numbers with new drawings every four minutes. Customers have the option to play Multi-Chance Keno for a chance to win free games or Keno Plus for a chance to win a special multiplier. According to the Connecticut Office of Legislative Research, jurisdictional keno is quite common in the United States outside of Rhode Island in places like the District of Columbia, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Oregon, and West Virginia.
In 2009, Govenor Rell proposed a state-run keno system to help balance the budget and we should revisit this proposal. The Connecticut Lottery Corporation projected gross annual sales could be as high as $300 million.
There have been questions whether state-run keno would violate the state’s revenue-sharing agreements with the Mohegans and Mashantuckets which have agreed to pay the state 25% of gross slot machine revenue “so long as no other person within the State lawfully operates . . .[any] commercial casino games.”
So, the question is whether keno is a “commercial casino game” and if the state is defined as an “other person”.
According to a 2010 Connecticut Office of Legislative Research document, “neither state law nor the state’s agreements with the Mohegans and the Mashantuckets define ‘commercial casino games.’”
In 2008, Connecticut Department of Special Revenue legislative liaison Paul Bernstein said that state-authorized keno would not violate agreements because “it would be an extension of lottery products.”
In the State of Michigan vs. Little Band of Ottawa Indians from 2007, Michigan had state-tribal gaming contracts with two tribes and it was ruled that “the other person” did not apply to state-run keno games since the state was one of the parties in the agreement.
Keno, one of the oldest games of chance, traced back to an ancient Chinese game from the 3rd century B.C., should be one of the newest games of the Connecticut State Lottery. The addition of keno would provide more entertainment to bars and restaurants that already feature off-track-betting branches.
