New legislation also allows tribal casinos to participate in online gaming and sports betting making this an incredibly profitable enterprise for the companies as bettors are loving the FanDuel betting odds online.
It remains to be seen how much this will hurt the industry after all, casino owners have found ways around these regulations in other states that have never had tribal casinos.
Nevertheless, it is a concerning sign that even tribal casinos are now able to capitalize on our state’s regulatory void.
Some in Washington have even been critical of the move to eliminate tribal casino gambling in Washington.
“There are people who have been operating casinos on Indian lands in the United States for nearly 200 years, and they have never been denied a license. It seems to me it’s simply wrong to apply those standards to people who have been doing this for thousands of years and have never had a problem, and to make it easier for tribes to come in and take advantage of that,” said Ken Rich, chairman of the Washington Tribe Gaming Association.
Other casino owners in the state are now scrambling to get in on the action, hoping to obtain licenses before tribal members vote in January.
For those who follow Indian gaming legislation, this seems like the latest step in an ongoing effort by Indian gaming advocates to open up tribal gaming to competition from state-licensed casinos. The effort has been met with a fierce opposition from tribal leaders, with many of the concerns highlighted in the comments section. The comments section of the piece is filled with concerns about a host of issues. But the most popular one, and one that illustrates the level of opposition on the part of many tribes, is the concern that opening up tribal gaming would jeopardize the entire Indian gaming industry.
This concerns is rooted in the fact that there is still no industry regulation in Indian gaming that could prevent gambling addiction and over-consumption. And so it follows that the most logical answer would be to regulate it as any other business that will lead to a problem is regulated, to prevent those problems from occurring.
The problem with this is that casino ownership often involves an investment that will be worth trillions of dollars. The reason that many tribes have not invested in tribal gaming because the investments have been based on the perception that the games are too expensive.
A casino in New Mexico. (Photo: Richard Boettcher/CC BY 2.0)
That same perception is still in place among the majority of the tribes in the U.S. However, the fact that some tribes are putting in significant money into the process is good enough for the casino owners and the industry.
The bottom line is that the amount of money being spent on these casinos is based on the fact that the casinos want to attract those who can afford to invest. The casinos are then competing with a lot of other more accessible gaming opportunities like restaurants, golf courses, bars and bars that are being built in other parts of the country, but that do not necessarily have casino experiences. So the casinos need to bring their pricing up to the bar that the other places are charging, or at least be more competitive. So the casino’s have their own ideas about how to price the room and the package.
So the second part of my analysis, and this is very important, is that the average casino is very competitive, particularly at the higher levels. You know, the largest casinos have many other customers to draw from and are generally looking at room and package prices that are higher than the places that aren’t their size. But there’s no clear-