A casino is a facility that houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. It is often located near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, and cruise ships. There are two main types of casino: land-based and online. The term is also used to refer to a building that hosts live entertainment events.

The modern casino is like an indoor amusement park for adults, with the vast majority of the entertainment (and profits for the owner) coming from gambling. Slot machines, black jack, roulette, craps and keno provide the billions in profit that casinos rake in each year.

Casinos make money by establishing an edge on all games of chance, even the ones that require skill and strategy. This advantage is typically very small, but it adds up over time and millions of bets. This revenue stream allows casinos to spend lavishly on attractions, from fountains and towers to a wide variety of world-class restaurants.

In the past, legitimate businessmen were reluctant to get involved with casinos because they carried the taint of illegal racketeering and extortion. But organized crime had plenty of cash from drug dealing and extortion, and it saw casinos as lucrative money-making opportunities. In Reno and Las Vegas, mobster money flowed into casinos at a steady rate. Mobster involvement drew the attention of federal investigators, and the mobsters were forced out of the business by a combination of law enforcement and market forces. Today, real estate investors and hotel chains are the primary owners of casinos, and they avoid any taint of mob affiliation.