Asia Times: Hardship fuels Armenian gambling fever



	February 26, 2000	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Hardship fuels Armenian gambling fever
By Emil Danielyan

YEREVAN - Every morning dozens of mostly elderly men and women form a long line in the center of the Armenian capital, Yerevan, in temperatures below freezing. It is not pension benefits or relief aid that they are waiting for. Somber and miserable, they are trying their luck at gambling - an activity that until now was unthinkable among that social group in Armenia.

One of the many gambling halls in Armenia offers everybody a free ticket to take part in the opening draw of bingo. It's a chance that those mired in poverty cannot afford to miss.

Bingo halls packed with desperate people are symptomatic of the nationwide fever for gambling. Lotteries, slot machines, and casinos are now part of the day-to-day life of a growing number of Armenians. And the proportion of those people involved in gambling industry has become so large that sociologists speak of a major change in the national culture.

Armenia's persisting social hardships make the industry one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. That growth has been particularly visible over the past year. Snark reported earlier this month that revenues in 1999 from licensing fees for casinos and gambling halls totaled 87.6 million drams (more than $160,000), while revenues from lottery licenses amounted to 6 million drams.

Verzhine Marutian, 72, is poor, drawn, and not one's idea of a gambler. She was visibly happy when she became one of two lucky bingo players (out of more than 200 participants) to win 2,000 drams ($4). That sum is almost equal roughly a third or even half of her monthly pension.

''Life forces us to come here,'' said another player, a man in his 70s who was not lucky that day.

Life also forces many other people to bank on a sudden windfall. A game known as ''lotto'' and similar to bingo has come to be the most popular form of gambling. Those whose numbers listed on cards are called out in a draw can expect to win anything from a free lottery ticket to an apartment. There are now more than a dozen weekly lotto games, all of them run by private companies and broadcast live on nationwide television.

Such games have regular slots on state-owned Armenian National Television (ANT), the channel that can be received by the largest number of people in the country. Every weekday at 7:10pm local time ANT airs the lotto draw. Each day, the draw is organized by a different company.

While competition is becoming increasingly tough, two local firms, Family Lotto and Kind Lotto, have emerged as the market leaders. In a country of just over 3 million inhabitants, they each sell up to 300,000 tickets a week. Only a quarter of ticket-holders win something. The main weekly prize is usually the equivalent of $10,000. More than a hundred other lucky ticket-holders win television sets, refrigerators, and washing machines, while thousands of others have to content themselves with smaller wins.

''This gambling boom results from the hopeless situation the people are now in,'' said Aharon Adibekian, a local sociologist. ''Gambling gives them hope for a better life, something which they haven't got from government officials and politicians in the last 10 years.'' The popularity of the games, Adibekian said, testifies to changes in a national character that was molded over centuries. A tragic history taught Armenians to tuck away extra money in the anticipation of worse times. Reliance on hard work rather than pure luck was a norm.

Since the transition to the free market has still not translated into economic benefits for most people, Adibekian argued, gambling may be perceived to be the most realistic way of ending the miseries of life. ''If things remain as they are, the younger generation may adopt it as a norm of behavior,'' he warned.

Lottery firms admit that poverty is the major driving force behind their business. They are also keen to cite the benefits they bring to the economy. As one Kind Lotto executive put it, ''a whole army of people'' are kept busy selling lottery tickets. And they sell well, judging by the abundance of retailers in Yerevan alone. One such ticket costs 300-500 drams.

Brisk sales are kept up by aggressive advertising, which gives television channels hefty revenues. In addition, the lottery firms are major taxpayers. Wealthier Armenians choose to gamble in casinos and smaller ''game houses'' that have slot machines only. According to official figures, there are nearly 80 such places in Armenia, the bulk of them in the capital. They, too, have spread rapidly in the last few years, often at the expense of other businesses. One of Yerevan's expensive jewelry shops shrunk its floor space by half last year to allow slot machines to be installed.

Some casinos violate a government requirement stipulating that they must be at least 200 meters away from a school. Nor do they post a notice about the ''negative consequences of visiting a casino'', as is required by law.

(Copyright (c) 2000 RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.)