Recent Legal Action on Eight-Liners Leaves No Doubt in Illegality

posted on 10.21.2024

While it has been some time since TAB fielded the question, the advertising of businesses seeking to promote onsite video lottery terminals, more commonly known as "eight-liners," is clearly illegal after a recent Texas Supreme Court action.

After a nearly nine-year battle, the Texas Supreme Court denied a game room operator's request to rehear a case involving the City of Fort Worth's attempts to regulate and prohibit such businesses.

City officials had sought to classify the devices as illegal.

A "gambling device" is defined in the Texas Penal Code as any electronic, electromechanical, or mechanical contrivance that for consideration affords the player an opportunity to obtain anything of value, the award of which is determined at least partially by chance, whether or not the prize is paid automatically by the device.

TAB's state legal counsel, Jackson Walker LLP, has been clear on this issue for many years writing in the TAB Guide to Gaming Advertising that "eight-liners are simply an electronic or mechanical version of a lottery and so it is illegal to either operate or advertise them."

Game rooms have argued there is an exception in Texas law for devices "for bona fide amusement if the awards are exclusively noncash merchandise prizes, toys, or novelties, or a representation of value redeemable for those items, that have a wholesale value the lesser of $5.00 or 10 times the amount charged to play."

It's the so-called "fuzzy animal" exception which is intended to allow grappling device amusement machines in which the customer attempts to use "skill" to retrieve a stuffed animal from within the machine for a coin fee.

The Fort Worth Court of Appeals reaffirmed in 2022 that the exception does not apply to eight-liners and such machines are considered "lotteries," or games of "chance."

The Texas Supreme Court decision not to rehear the Fort Worth case and its earlier decision in another case should make it clear that attempts to advertise such gaming is illegal.

In the other decision, game room operators attempted to bypass the state law by awarding coupons redeemable for either gift certificates or cash to play other games, but the court ruled that doing so was the equivalent of awarding cash.

Questions? Contact TAB's Michael Schneider or call (512) 322-9944.

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