Whither tribal gaming? That was the topic posed by pechanga.net publisher Victor Rocha at the top of a Global Gaming Expo panel entitled “Sustaining Success: Tribal Leaders Talk Gaming, Growth and Challenges.”
The recurrent theme was challenges. “Nothing is permanent,” Rocha said. “We as Native Americans know we have to be constantly vigilant. We didn’t realize the existential threats happening under our feet.”
He was referring primarily to the rise of prediction markets, which weren’t on tribal radar one year ago, panelists admitted. Rocha told of attending a party that reminded him of the movie Blade. He found himself surrounded by vampiric sweepstakes-gaming executives. “You had these Australians coming into our territory with Chumba and social gaming, taking money.”
Sweeps snuck in, California Nations Indian Gaming Association (CNIGA) President James Siva said, under the cover afforded by an electoral dustup over sports betting. A bill on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk to ban such sweepstakes is “just the beginning,” Siva warned. As for sports betting, “If they come, they’ll come in under our terms,” he said, alluding to private-sector OSB giants.
Ione Band of Miwok Indians Chairperson Sara Dutschke said her tribe’s story was compelling, but hardly unique. She chafes under federal oversight that let gray-market operators into California when her tribe had no resources to fight back. “We watch operators swoop in at the 11th hour and take that market share.”
Tribal gaming, Rocha resumed, is now a $50 billion-a-year industry, “which allows you a lot of justice. You get the justice you can afford in this country.”
In California, Rocha said, gaming regulators and the state did nothing, so “we had to do it ourselves. We always have to do things the hard way. Before [gaming], it was land, it was water” that were under siege.
“Tribes are obviously concerned about unregulated illegal gaming,” chimed in David Z. Bean, acting chairman of the Indian Gaming Association (IGA). “Folks are becoming aware of it. Tribal casinos across the country are worried about it.”
“Same as it ever was,” rejoined Rocha. “Anything we have is always going to be under assault.” Rocha railed in particular against daily fantasy sports, which California Attorney General Rob Bonta has been trying to roll back. “It’s the gamification of America,” taking a casual pastime and monetizing it, writ large. “They sped it up. They got it digital. Then they started exchanging money. They started doing peer-to-peer.”
Siva evinced some frustration with Bonta, saying there was no timeline for enforcement of his DFS ban. Nor does the attorney general’s office have the manpower to enforce it. “He’s had that opinion for two years.” Meanwhile, he recounted, DFS is running rampant and raiding tribal player bases. “They’ll come back for whatever we have left.”
“You can’t rely on their goodwill, because there is no goodwill,” Rocha said of DFS operators. But tribes will fight back at the drop of a hat, he continued. Igaming, he said, has slowed the growth of terrestrial revenues and the gaining of new customers “that won’t be ours until they reach menopause. They’re going for the younger demographic that doesn’t come to our casinos.”
Unity, panelists concurred, was more important than ever. All tribes, Bean maintained, were affected by the federal government and by illegal and legal gambling. “That’s a threat to our customers, the integrity of the game, our assets.”
Rocha took aim at the Trump administration. “You hear about how sacred our borders are,” but there’s been no comparable respect for tribal sovereignty.
Still, panelists saw reasons for hope. Look at what California did to sports betting, Bean contended. Commercial gaming learned the lesson that the path ahead is through a healthy respect for tribal prerogatives. “We don’t like to fight, but we will vigorously defend our communities,” he summarized.
Seconded Siva, “We’re not the aggressor. We’re defending our inherent rights.”
Tribal gaming “really is the promise of an economic future,” Dutschke said, observing that 70 percent of the Miwok band lives below the poverty line. No matter how much federal subsidy comes through, “it’s never going to be enough. Gaming is a promise of a very strong future … real, true, career opportunities for our citizens.”
Dutschke recalled her great-grandmother talking to her about “the cause,” namely the reclamation of lost tribal lands, a crusade dating back to the late 19th century. “Gaming is what provided my tribe the opportunity to buy land.” Her dream, she continued, is building homes where tribal elders can live together, “ride their scooters around and be happy. I can see these things finally on the horizon, but it also feels a little bit wobbly.”
Rocha then raised the topic of prediction markets, which he said are not only a threat to tribes, but to private-sector OSB providers. He said he’d talked to Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour and was told tribes had nothing to worry about, that Kalshi wasn’t coming after them.
But now Kalshi is planning to set up online casinos. “This is where it was always going to go,” Rocha fumed. “This isn’t a state issue. Every time the states get involved, they get shoved back.”
It is, Siva said, the biggest current threat to tribal gaming, yet no one was really discussing it until Kalshi started taking Super Bowl wagers. Siva said he did a deep dive into event contracts at that time and “what they’re offering does not fit that definition. This is illegal unregulated gaming, period. It’s happening today.”
“They used to be experts on pork bellies and now they’re experts on gambling,” scoffed Rocha. “As a Native American, it’s Class II all around. It’s the same thing that’s coming back at us.”
Siva said that Native American tribes have been working hard, but making little progress against prediction markets. He added that some of the names to replace failed Commodity Futures Trading Commission nominee Brian Quintenz are even worse.
Added Siva, “It’s impossible to ignore the connection to this administration. I’ll just leave it at that.”
Dutschke warned that it was more than losing market share, but reputation as well. She said both the Sky River and Thunder Valley casinos had been spoofed online, causing confusion amongst tribal members. “If our own people don’t know, how does the general public know?”
“It’s almost like manifest destiny again,” Rocha lamented. “What we’re fighting is Wall Street, tech bros, venture capitalists. They don’t care that Ayn Rand died on Social Security. They just want The Fountainhead.”
Bean countered that tribes need to be more tech-savvy in order to do battle. “This contract betting has no guardrails, no regulation.” Yet he received blank stares when he tried to warn a small-market casino about it. Similarly, senators didn’t question Quintenz on the topic, because they didn’t understand it.
“We don’t want to scare you folks, but we do need to open our eyes,” Bean continued. “Our tax-revenue bases are at risk.”
Rocha was shocked by the lack of assistance from the federal government. Fifty attorneys general, he said, had pleaded for Justice Department action against sweepstakes games. Now they’re dead, Rocha claimed. “We cut their legs out from under them. [But] they’re still whining out there.”
The anti-sweeps bill currently before Newsom would attack both sweeps operators and their supply chains. “So now we have a template. In the last year, we’ve shown what we can do when we get together. There is a model for fighting back,” Rocha said.
The panel closed by remembering recently deceased IGA Chairman Ernie Stevens, Jr. “We lost a powerful voice, a powerful man, but his leadership was crafted by tribes across the U.S. Chairman Stevens would be the first to say he didn’t do this alone. We’re going to carry forward with his mission,” said potential successor Bean.
They also stressed the importance of diversification. Siva thought tribal leaders should play up non-gaming amenities, also reaching out to young people who are used to buying things online that can only be used online. He also felt that inequity amongst tribes needed to be fought. “It has to be something we focus on more.”
Presiding over what will be one of California’s newest casinos, Dutschke said she has learned to think very differently about how it will look, in order to provide an experience for all, “not just a machine” in which people play slots.
“Leveraging our sovereignty is how gaming came to pass,” Dutschke closed. “Now we’ve learned there’s casinos everywhere. Most are doing very well. We have really powerful Indian rights. We are never just coming into an area and leaving, to extract what we can get.”
