Tonight is the night that Birmingham City Council’s inner cabinet must choose which of two rival super casino bids to back. The heated words and acrimony that has erupted between the two camps may seem, to many, a waste of hot air, as the contest to build Britain’s first mega casino has surely been won by Blackpool even before the participants get out of the starting gate. But then there is that insistent little rumour that the government may do another U-turn and licence up to eight regional casinos, in which case the battle is worth pursuing.

On the face of it, the Las Vegas Sands project with Birmingham City Football Club has more regeneration possibilities than the MGM Mirage plan for the National Exhibition Centre (NEC); and regeneration is one of the top government priorities for the location of the largest casino in the country. However, it is not the only one. Social impact and the ability to deliver are others. Birmingham City Council previously made a failed attempt to get the two projects combined and must now select one to submit to the Casino Advisory Board before 31 March.

For the Council both projects have certain merits. The NEC at present makes a loss and the Council must subsidise it. A mega casino should change that loss into a healthy profit that will go into Council coffers. On the other hand, the casino plans at the football ground site include a £55 million (US$96.6 million) clean-up of contaminated land that the Council has never been able to fund. Tonight should be decision time and, when the final whistle blows to end the contest, doubtless there will be some who will claim, just as at the best soccer matches, ‘we woz robbed!’ (E-03.20.06)

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