“The first of October we’ll be starting to get back to normal,” he said.

While Burns thinks the casino could have had some impact on the number of bingo players, he’s also seen a decrease from bad economic factors, including high gas prices that leave players with little or no disposable income.

“As far as the casino solely being the blame, no,” he said. “You got your die-hard bingo players, so the casino’s not hurting them as far as that goes. It probably would hurt with the part-time players,”

Some people go to the casino and spend $100 in 20 minutes, then realize they could have spent $15 and played bingo for five hours with the chance of a $6,000 payout, Burns said.

It’s too early to tell if the casino is what is affecting bingo halls’ losses, said Jahnae Erpenbach, director of marketing at Hoosier Park.

“It’s really just too early to judge our impact,” she said. “Obviously we’re a new and major attraction in the area, and there are going to be so many people who want to come.”

Gambling has been allowed in Indiana for 13 years, and it doesn’t seem to have affected the bingo halls in the past, Erpenbach said.

“When you look at that and you look at the time spent with gaming in Indiana, its impact on charitable gaming has really been minimal,” she said. “Time’s going to tell how that’s going to normalize, but when you look at history, that’s been minimal.”

A loss of bingo players doesn’t just mean fewer bingo cards and chips, but also fewer pull-tabs sold, which are directly linked to the number of bingo players at the posts.

Bingo isn’t usually profitable on its own, so many bingo halls use the game to lure in those who will buy pull-tabs, where the real money is made. Every pull-tab game has a built-in profit of 20 percent, Ray said, which helped pay for bingo and the post’s operations and charities.

“We were basically putting bingo out there as a hook to buy pull-tabs,” Ray said. “That’s been the norm for bingo for the last 15 years.”

Bingo and pull-tabs feed off each other, said Burns, whose Elks bingo seems to be holding its own, even with the new casino.

“Could you ever break even on bingo? No,” Burns said. “We’re close to being able to break even, but some nights you have a little but more of a tougher time. Everything we’re taking in is going right back out.”

Anderson’s Elks bingo hasn’t been able to make many charitable contributions in its five months of operation, because it still is paying start-up costs, Burns said.

Bingo halls were concerned about another threat earlier in the year, in that the IGC might require bingo operations to be profitable on their own, without the help of pull-tabs.