Internet Issues Tribes ‘all over the spectrum’ on iGaming >> BY DAVE PALERMO
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KURT LUGER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR of the Great Plains Indian Gaming Association in Bismarck, North Dakota, believes he knows what it takes for American Indian governments in the rural United States to succeed with internet poker. “We need a coalition,” says Luger, with enough tribes to generate the player liquidity for a profitable online poker venture. “I’d like to see (an internet) server on Shakopee,” he says of the prosperous Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community in Prior Lake, Minnesota, near Minneapolis, an operation that would link smaller, remote tribes in the Midwest, Great Plains and throughout the United States. “That’s what I would like to see happen, if I had my druthers.” Outside California—potentially the country’s most lucrative online poker market with 38 million people—many of the 255 tribes in the lower 48 states believe interstate alliances are crucial to efforts to leverage entry into online gambling. California is the anomaly, with tribes and card rooms seeking legislation to legalize intrastate internet poker. (See related story, page 14.) Tribal networks linking reservations in the more rural states are particularly logical in the absence of federal legislation and with the growing number of states legalizing internet gambling, creating competition for the 425 Indian casinos in 28 states. Ten states may legalize online wagering this year, said Gambling Compliance.com, joining Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware. Meanwhile, a handful of smaller tribes are considering launching real-money websites to offer poker and Class II 10 TRIBAL GOVERNMENT G AMING 2014
Kurt Luger
bingo under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. Some plan to press the legal envelope and accept wagers beyond reservation borders, a strategy many Indian law experts believe will be found to violate federal law. But defining a nationwide internet trend in Indian Country is extremely difficult. “Tribes are all over the spectrum on iGaming,” says online consultant Ehren Richardson. With the likelihood Congress will not move on internet wagering, a growing number of indigenous leaders no longer see the urgency to seek entry into the market. “There is not the pressure to get it done today as there was a few years ago,” says Chuck Bunnell, CEO of the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut. And, perhaps most significant, larger tribes are becoming skeptical that the resources needed to launch a gambling website will justify the returns. The skepticism is supported by dismal revenue reports out of Nevada and New Jersey, where Governor Chris Christie’s expectations of $180 million a year have been lowered to $34 million. “Some of the bigger tribes have really, really looked at the internet,” says a prominent Washington lobbyist, “particularly a few years ago, when there was the sense, ‘It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen.’ “But there’s now a sense nothing is going to happen. And the bigger tribes aren’t willing to put a lot of money out because they don’t see the returns.” “I’ve seen that all along,” says Jeffrey Nelson, attorney for the Tribal Internet Gaming Alliance (TIGA) a coalition of two Wisconsin tribes (Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and Bad River Band of Indians) seeking to link reservations in a network offering Class II bingo.