Indian gaming survived the pandemic with lower-than-expected losses, thanks to tribal leaders’ early emphasis on public-health measures despite flak they received, four executives said Monday.
Now, more than 18 months after the first casino closures, the tribal sovereignty that allowed Indian casinos to reopen before their commercial counterparts is being questioned again amid the expansion of online gaming and mobile sports betting.
“We have (the) authority, just like the United States government and every state does,” said Bernadine Burnette, president of the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona and president of the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation. “Let us run our businesses. We know what in the world we’re doing. We know what’s best for our people. Let us decide.”
Burnette spoke on the opening day of the Global Gaming Expo, a widely anticipated gathering after the 2020 event had to be conducted virtually because of the pandemic. The panel discussion, “Tribal Gaming’s Revival,” also featured Ernie Stevens, Jr., in his eighth term as chairman of the National Indian Gaming Association, and Stephanie Bryan, the first woman elected tribal chair and CEO for the Alabama-based Poarch Band of Creek Indians, which operates 10 casino properties in the United States and the Caribbean and plans a $541 million casino resort in Virginia. Victor Rocha, owner and editor of Pechanga.net, moderated.
Despite projections in early 2020 that tribal gaming revenue would be less than half the record set in 2019, the National Indian Gaming Commission reported the drop was only 20 percent, $27.8 billion in fiscal 2020, compared with $34.6 billion in fiscal 2019.
While Indian gaming is doing better than expected, “We’ve still got a long way to go,” Stevens said. He noted the first two quarters of 2021 show tribal gaming rebounding faster than expected, even while strict COVID-safety protocols such as masking requirements and smoking bans remain in place.
Bryan said the expansion of sports betting and its impact on traditional casinos is not the only issue requiring consideration of tribal sovereignty. So do the debate over President Biden’s two infrastructure plans and the continuing COVID fight. “We’re in an atmosphere where we have to fight to protect our sovereignty for all of Indian country,” she said.
Legalized sports betting began in September in Arizona, with tribes getting all 10 available licenses, but partnering with professional sports teams and platform providers. Burnette, whose tribe signed a 26-year extension on its gaming compact in April, recommended a cautious approach to sports-betting-revenue projections, since profits must be shared. “We can’t be too greedy, because we give a lot back to our states. We give a lot of donations.”
Rocha compared tribes’ concerns with protecting land-based casinos from mobile betting to Nevada regulations that do essentially the same thing.
“A lot of people look at (tribes) as heretics for trying to protect our brick-and-mortars,” he said. “(Commercial operators) don’t want mobile here in Nevada. They don’t have the lottery here, to protect the casinos. They want you to come down to the property and bet on the property. It’s the same thing that the tribes want, yet we seem to get more flak for it than everyone else.”
He said tribes are cautious about online gaming and sports betting in states where they have gaming compacts because of two questions: What would they give up by allowing the expansion and what do they get in return?
Stevens said full recovery from COVID includes building back to the 700,000 jobs created directly by Indian gaming and to again be among the top 11 employers in the country. Improving bandwidth in Indian Country is another top objective, he said.
“We’re not going to get for Indian Country what we need unless we go out there and fight for it in a diplomatic, respectful way,” he said.
