LEWISTON – Bingo master Dick Laliberte is hoping smokers will find their way back to his tables this winter.

Laliberte has seen the number of players drop since a statewide smoking ban went into effect two weeks ago.

Normally, the club’s bingo attracts about 130 players per night. That has dropped to about 80 per night, said Laliberte, game master for the Cavalier Country Club’s Tuesday and Thursday night bingo games at Canal Street Plaza.

Despite the drop in attendance, “we’ll hang in there,” Laliberte said. “We’ve been doing this for years and we’re going to keep doing it.”

Jane Burns, game manager for the Lewiston Youth Activity Fund, isn’t so confident. Her group runs games out of the Canal Street Plaza on Wednesdays. Like Laliberte, Burns said she has averaged 80 players a night since the smoking ban took effect.

“Our break-even point is 70,” Burns said. “We drop below that, we’re done.”

The change is obvious, especially among the regular players.

“We have entire tables of people that we don’t see any more, all because of the smoking,” she said. “We can probably name each person who is not here.”

Laliberte said he’s pulling out all the stops to bring them back. Tuesday, he debuted his Pink Flamingo game. Each week, they’ll select one player to remove a chip from a bin.

If that chip has a pink flamingo on it, they win $1,000. If not, the chip is put in a discard pile. They start with 52 chips and will continue until there is only one chip left or someone wins.

He also has a lot riding on Thursday night’s Super Bingo, featuring 11 games, each with a $500 prize. Laliberte said he’s confident that will bring the players in, whether or not they smoke.

“Last month, we gave out $6,476 in prizes,” Laliberte said. “If that doesn’t bring them in, I don’t know what will.”

Big spenders

Jackie Farrell, chairwoman of the Elks Lodge’s weekly Wednesday afternoon bingo, said the number of players there has increased. The non-smoking games have brought in an average of 10 new players per week.

The Elks are having a hard time, however. Several players stopped coming and those players were the big spenders. Weekly revenues are down from $3,300 per week before the ban to about $1,000 per week now.

“The people that stopped were the pull ticket players, and that’s where the real money is,” Farrell said. “Before, we went through eight or nine boxes of tickets per week, and that’s a profit for us of about $300 per box. This week, we barely used two boxes.”

Farrell said the Elks Lodge is trying to sell a variety of games to the newcomers

Ultimately, the charities the bingo games support will suffer, game operators said. Laliberte said his group gave out 10 scholarships of $500 each to Lewiston-based college students last year.

“I just don’t see how we can meet those goals without the revenue,” he said. “I don’t imagine we’ll be able to, unless some of those people start coming back.”

staylor@sunjournal.com

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