The prospect of living in Zimbabwe is something of a risk at the moment, so you might think that there would be little affinity for supporting Zimbabwe’s gambling halls. Actually, it seems to be functioning the other way, with the atrocious economic conditions leading to a higher ambition to wager, to attempt to discover a fast win, a way out of the difficulty.
For many of the locals subsisting on the abysmal nearby money, there are 2 dominant styles of betting, the state lottery and Zimbet. Just as with almost everywhere else on the planet, there is a state lotto where the probabilities of succeeding are remarkably low, but then the jackpots are also extremely large. It’s been said by market analysts who look at the subject that many do not buy a ticket with the rational assumption of hitting. Zimbet is built on either the domestic or the United Kingston football leagues and involves predicting the results of future games.
Zimbabwe’s casinos, on the other shoe, pamper the extremely rich of the country and vacationers. Up till recently, there was a incredibly big sightseeing industry, built on safaris and trips to Victoria Falls. The market anxiety and associated conflict have cut into this market.
Among Zimbabwe’s casinos, there are two in the capital, Harare, the Carribea Bay Resort and Casino, which has 5 gaming tables and slot machines, and the Plumtree Casino, which has just the slots. 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, the pair of which offer table games, slots and video machines, and Victoria Falls houses the Elephant Hills Hotel and Casino and the Makasa Sun Hotel and Casino, the pair of which offer gaming machines and blackjack, roulette, and craps tables.
In addition to Zimbabwe’s gambling dens and the aforestated mentioned lottery and Zimbet (which is very like a parimutuel betting system), there are a total of 2 horse racing tracks in the country: the Matabeleland Turf Club in Bulawayo (the 2nd metropolis) and the Borrowdale Park in Harare.
Since the economy has contracted by more than 40 percent in the past few years and with the associated poverty and bloodshed that has cropped up, it is not known how well the tourist business which supports Zimbabwe’s casinos will do in the near future. How many of them will still be around until things improve is merely unknown.
