A California tribal leader asserted that the economic benefits of legalized sports betting to tribes may not be as profound or easily quantifiable as advertised and is calling for new research to be conducted to help tribes better understand the landscape.
“I do think it’s being oversold, but I think that’s [because] there’s not a lot of quantifiable data,” Mark Marcarro, chairman of the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians, at a G2E panel Tuesday exploring how tribes should navigate the sports betting debate.
He emphasized that while he thinks expanding legalized sports betting will be a net benefit to tribes on the whole, his experiences, gleaned from a decade of battling over Internet poker in his home state, have prompted him to view these types of questions with a more skeptical eye.
“There were wild estimates out there about the world of liquidity of these things, and by last year [Internet poker estimates] were down by 75 percent,” Macarro said, adding that a similar development with regard to sports betting wouldn’t be a surprise.
Macarro elaborated by saying that while casino operators typically report that the energy from their sportsbooks tends to overflow onto the casino floor, this is still just “anecdotal” evidence that doesn’t provide a full picture.
“We’re all looking at the same limited amount of data, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot there,” he said, noting that the $150 billion figure is extrapolated from data that was gathered 20 years ago. “We need some new studies, we need some analytics, we need something quantifiable.”
Robbie McGhee, vice chairman of the Poarch Creek Band of Creek Indians in Alabama, reckoned that, while sports betting will likely be a benefit to tribes, it’s important to understand what that benefit will actually look like.
“You keep hearing about that [$150 billion] that’s being illegally wagered, that money that’s just going out, that money that’s not being taxed,” he said. “But when you look at it, you’re really only talking about a five percent benefit to the actual tribe or whoever is doing it.”
But that shouldn’t preclude a tribe from participating in the activity, McGhee emphasized. Rather, they must understand ahead of time that this new wagering in and of itself will not necessarily be a needle mover.
“[Casinos] are not actually getting that much off the actual sports betting itself, and these are things that we’re not going to want to comp,” he continued, stressing that the key aspect is making sure that the activity is giving people a new reason to visit a casino.
“You want your sportsbook to be able to bring in people to your bricks and mortar buildings,” he said.
