At “Elevate 2026: Streamlining the Path from Audit to Financials,” Wipfli representatives will do what they always do when engaging tribal operators.
“Each tribe is their own nation and sovereign government,” says Grant Eve, a Wipfli partner and gaming and tribal government leader. “Each one set up different. Each one may have different objectives, and so really, when we first engage, it’s to listen, learn, and understand what some of those goals and objectives are, and be curious but respectful.”
Elevate 2026 is a two-day in-person workshop designed for tribal gaming finance, audit and accounting leaders and team members. It takes place August 26-27 at Graton Resort and Casino in Rohnert Park, California.
In its 2026 Indian Gaming Cost of Doing Business Report, a comprehensive survey across the Indian gaming industry to provide a detailed report on the financial state of tribal casinos, Wipfli examines data from 113 Native American organizations in 18 states. Factors including gross profit, net profit, liquidity, solvency, and return on investment are looked at. The conclusion is that tribal gaming is healthy, but as in any business, operators must be wary of undue outside influences.
“From a brick-and-mortar standpoint, tribal gaming continues to be strong, especially in those urban areas and the larger facilities,” Eve says. ‘Some of the rural ones still struggle a little bit, but as you probably know, for some of the rural ones sometimes the intent isn’t always to make a profit. Sometimes it might be tribal employment or whatever the case may be.”
Wipfli crunches data and attempts to quantify tribal operations. In the Cost of Doing Business Report, Eve said that revenue from slots at all casinos was up 16%, “a real eye opener for me,” Eve admitted. And he was also surprised that labor costs were managed well, even though there was broad-based inflation.
“That (inflation) was really showing up, but not as much at larger facilities,” Eve says. “If you look at the high-profit casinos and the urban casinos, that continued to have large margins. I think urban casinos are around 38% compared to 23% for rural. That just shows that population centers continue to be one of the strongest predictors of the financial performance out there.”
By providing a complete financial picture, Wipfli enables casinos to fine tune their approach and plan for future.
“Just being able to provide the industry with a benchmarking report that has scale allows them to be able to set their strategy and see what maybe some of their competition, or more importantly what some of their peers, are doing,” Eve says. “I think then those tribal leaders can focus on what their strategy or plan is and implement that over the next year or next several years.”
“What are your goals? Is it profitability to send money back to the tribe, is it profitability so you can reinvest in the property? Or is it tribal employment if you’re a more rural facility without much of a population base to draw from?”
