I've had Sims visit Malcolm Landgraab's Club Dante, which has one of those meters on it, and actually EARN money just by being there.

I found it very useful for college students!

Now what's with that meter, exactly...? I thought it was supposed to charge Sims just for being on that lot...? I hardly if ever bother with Sim-owned businesses.

I don't care for that meter much. Sims usually just gather around outside staring at it, I'd rather they come inside. One day I'll try to make use of it.

They gather around it to decide if they want to buy a ticket. Once they make up their mind (And you can use sales options to improve the chances that they will buy a ticket, or just wait. Or start a group activity and "ask to join", which sometimes works.)they either buy a ticket or leave.

Once they have decided to buy a ticket, you will see money being transferred every hour according to the price set on the machine. They will stay until the game decides they ran out of money. (And if it's a home business, everyone in the household counts as earning the money, which is how a toddler ended up with a memory of earning 100,000 simoleons.)

I think the OP is commenting on how when a sim visits a lot another sim owns, every time the bandatron kachings the money goes to the active sim rather than the owner. This bug was on my list of stuff to fix for years but I have few player-owned businesses, and most of those are home businesses, so it never annoyed me enough to do anything about it. I noticed the problem seemingly no longer exists in AL so maybe they finally fixed it. Or maybe it was a bug in a mod and the mod got updated.

I think Pescado also has a fix for it. Or possibly Paladin. I don't have AL, and I don't have the problem anymore either.

Haha, that's incredibly funny.