The act of living in Zimbabwe is something of a risk at the current time, so you could imagine that there might be little appetite for supporting Zimbabwe’s gambling halls. In reality, it appears to be functioning the other way around, with the critical market circumstances leading to a greater ambition to bet, to attempt to discover a fast win, a way out of the problems.
For almost all of the people surviving on the tiny local wages, there are 2 common types of gambling, the state lotto and Zimbet. As with most everywhere else in the world, there is a state lotto where the chances of profiting are extremely tiny, but then the prizes are also extremely high. It’s been said by financial experts who study the subject that the lion’s share do not buy a ticket with the rational expectation of winning. Zimbet is based on either the national or the English football divisions and involves predicting the results of future matches.
Zimbabwe’s gambling dens, on the other foot, mollycoddle the very rich of the nation and sightseers. Up till recently, there was a very big vacationing business, founded on nature trips and trips to Victoria Falls. The economic collapse and connected violence have cut into this trade.
Amongst Zimbabwe’s gambling dens, there are 2 in the capital, Harare, the Carribea Bay Resort and Casino, which has five gaming tables and slots, and the Plumtree gambling hall, which has just the slot machine games. The Zambesi Valley Hotel and Entertainment Center in Kariba also has only slot machines. Mutare contains the Monclair Hotel and Casino and the Leopard Rock Hotel and Casino, both of which have gaming tables, one armed bandits and electronic poker machines, and Victoria Falls houses the Elephant Hills Hotel and Casino and the Makasa Sun Hotel and Casino, both of which has gaming machines and tables.
In addition to Zimbabwe’s gambling halls and the above alluded to lottery and Zimbet (which is considerably like a pools system), there are also 2 horse racing complexes in the country: the Matabeleland Turf Club in Bulawayo (the 2nd city) and the Borrowdale Park in Harare.
Seeing as that the market has contracted by beyond 40% in the past few years and with the connected deprivation and violence that has arisen, it isn’t understood how healthy the tourist industry which supports Zimbabwe’s gambling dens will do in the in the years to come. How many of them will survive till conditions improve is simply not known.
