26 Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2019T
he Spirit Lake Tribe, owners of a modest, 49,000-square-foot casino
and 124-room hotel near Devil’s Lake in northeast North Dakota,
hopes to soon offer customers the opportunity to wager on college
and professional sports.
Tribal-state compacts permit North Dakota’s seven American Indian
casinos to operate sports betting. And Spirit Lake will hold a tribal referen-
dum this spring on a measure to allow alcohol at the casino. If it passes, the
tribe will build a sports bar.
“I don’t think it will be a full-blown sports book operation,” Slot Direc-
tor Jason Thompson says. “I don’t think we have the capability to do that.
But there are a lot of gamblers that will want to place bets on sporting events.
It will be a good source of revenue.”
Some 225 miles south in Hankinson, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of
the Lake Traverse Reservation are opposed to sports betting at their 95,000-
square-foot Dakota Magic casino and 111-room hotel.
“It’s been discussed,” Marketing Director Rojelio Rubio says. “But there
is currently no interest in it right now. There are a lot of risks and not a
whole lot of profit margin.”
The difference of opinion on sports betting between Spirit Lake and
Dakota Magic is indicative of the split among the nearly 500 casinos in 29
states that make up the $32.4 billion American Indian government casino
industry.
“It’s a good illustration of what is going on nationally,” attorney Greg
Gemignani, a lecturer at the International Center for Gaming Regulation at
the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, says of the North Dakota tribes. “Each
tribe has a different take on sports betting, or at least a slightly different spin.
I don’t know that they have a common desire to enter into it.
“A lot of tribes don’t want it, period,” Gemignani says. “Not only don’t
they want it, they don’t want the lottery or commercial gaming in the area to
have it, either.”
Many Indian tribes bought into a nationwide campaign by the American
Gaming Association, the commercial casino lobby, to encourage the U.S.
Supreme Court to strike down a federal prohibition against sports wagering.
Justices voted in May to nullify the Professional and Amateur Sports Protec-
tion Act (PASPA), opening sports betting legislation to the various states.
But the high risks and lack of profitability in sports betting—combinedwith the legal and regulatory challenges for tribes operating casinos under
federal law—soon diminished their enthusiasm.
Although tribes represent the largest segment of the nation’s approxi-
mately $100 billion legal gambling industry, it appears indigenous govern-
ments in only a few of the 29 states with significant Indian casino markets
will seek to operate sports betting anytime soon.A Divide Among Big, Small Players
Of the 242 tribes with casinos, only 18 percent generate a whopping 74.3
percent of the $32.4 billion won by tribal casinos nationwide, according to
the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC).
These approximately 90 lucrative casinos in largely urban areas stand to
gain the most from sports betting, a risky endeavor requiring a hefty invest-
ment while generating a meager profit of 3-5 percent.
The upscale resorts can afford elaborate sports books with high-defini-
tion screens flashing sporting events to a younger, more lucrative customer
willing to spend large on food, drinks and entertainment, not to mention
other games of chance.
“Providing dedicated room and space for a stand-alone sports book is
really going to be left to the larger guys,” says John Repa, president of Hos-
pitality and Gaming Solutions, or perhaps 40 to 80 of the casinos nation-
wide. Others may incorporate betting windows into bars and restaurants or
install kiosks.
But most tribes operate marginal, small to medium-sized facilities on
rural, often economically deprived reservations in the Great Plains, West
and Midwest—casinos intended to create jobs for struggling communities,
not revenue to fill the pockets of corporate shareholders.
“There’s a broad spectrum in Indian Country covering two extremes:
tribal nations that would not benefit at all and, on the other end, tribal na-
tions that would significantly benefit,” NIGC Chairman Jonodev Osceola
Chaudhuri told the Associated Press.
Of 494 tribal operations nationwide, 351 of them—or 71 percent—
generated just 14.1 percent of the $32.4 billion in casino revenues in 2017,
according to NIGC statistics.
Reservation casinos with 200 to 500 slot machines, a handful of table
games, a few hotel rooms and a fast food restaurant may not be inclined toOne Size
Does NOT
Fit All
Sports betting taking slow strides with
mid-size, small tribal casinos
By Dave Palermo
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