SPORTS BETTING AND INDIAN GAMING: OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO MARKET ENTRY AND INTEGRATION OF SPORTS BOOKS INTO TRIBAL CASINOS

Abstract Even before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision In Murphy v. NCAA (2018) permitting states to legalize sports wagering, the biggest brand-names in gaming worldwide were positioning themselves to capitalize on the fan base for America’s most recognizable sports leagues. Sports wagering already is up and running in five states; analysts predict that more than half the states will legalize it within five years. Many will be among the 29 states that currently have casinos owned and operated by American Indian tribes in this $32.4 billion market segment. There is no firm sense and little data pointing to how many of the 242 gaming tribes operating some 500 casinos will seek to open sports books, or on what basis they will make a decision. Yet the implications are critical to any tribal government responsible for the welfare of its people. In this paper, we posit that a tribe should carefully evaluate three main barriers to entry into the sports betting market: legality and regulation; feasibility and profitability; and market and competition. We identify each barrier and address threshold strategies for overcoming it. Our analysis is useful for tribes, states, or commercial operators considering whether to get in the game. Impact Full-scale legalized sports wagering at last is coming to the United States. In disrupted industries, first movers have the competitive advantage. Who will take the lead in a post-PASPA world: states, tribes, or commercial operators? How should tribes make the judgment whether to get in the game? And how will the prospects for sports betting impact the$32 billion Indian gaming industry? The answers to these questions are of critical significance in determining the relative successes and failures of the next major wave of legalized gaming in the U.S

Contextualizing Indian Gaming for the National Gambling Impact Study Commission

This paper discusses the Indian Gaming Subcommittee of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission (NGISC). It illustrates the efforts tribes made to educate members of the NGISC about the positive impacts of Indian casino gaming, and it also highlights the resistance tribes faced from the NGISC

Betting the Rancheria: Environmental Protections as Bargaining Chips Under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act

In 2005, the State of California and the Big Lagoon Rancheria American Indian Tribe reached an agreement whereby the tribe agreed to forego development plans for a casino on environmentally sensitive lands in exchange for the right to build a casino in Barstow, California. In January 2008, the Department of the Interior denied the Rancheria’s land-into-trust application for land in Barstow based on the Department’s newly issued “commutable distance” memorandum. This denial represents a missed opportunity to allow California and the tribe to cooperate in fashioning a workable tribal-state compact. The Department should abandon the guidance memorandum and allow tribes to pursue offreservation gaming in appropriate instances where the proposed development enjoys political support at the local level. In exchange, states should be afforded greater deference under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act to achieve some level of regulatory control to address the offreservation impacts of casino development

Indian Tribal Businesses and the Off-Reservation Market

American Indian tribes once operated regional trade centers, with broad geographical impact. With the arrival of European traders and settlers, this system began to erode, and later, the treaty and reservation system effectively eliminated the regional Indian economic market. Under the policies of measured separatism and assimilation, American Indians had no broad geographic power. Recently, as the policy of self-determination has taken hold, Indian tribes have begun to assert their economic power through federal government contracts, casino gaming, and trade agreements with foreign governments. This Article argues that this rising involvement has caused a backlash, and that holdover American government policy favoring assimilation and dependence threatens to frustrate emerging tribal participation in the broader economy

Bringing Balance to Indian Gaming

This Article proposes to codify the revenue sharing agreements already implemented, assuming the tribe consents; mandate all future casino-style gaming compacts include revenue sharing; and codify the Secretarial procedures designed to reestablish the enforcement mechanism. This proposal would cement the on-the-ground reality of Indian gaming that tribes and states have relied upon since 1996. Reform of the law of Indian gaming should focus on the underlying structure of the law of Indian gaming rather than the symptoms. Congress enacted the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988 as a compromise between Indian tribes and states. Congress required tribes to compact with state governments if they choose to begin casino-style gaming and extended federal court jurisdiction to claims against states that refused to negotiate in good faith. The Supreme Court’s Florida v. Seminole Tribe of Florida decision in 1996 disrupted the balance by eliminating the enforcement mechanism against states. State governments acquired the upper hand in gaming compact negotiations. The Secretary of Interior proposed regulations that would reestablish the enforcement mechanism against states, but the regulations have been ineffective due to their questionable validity. From 1996 to the present, Indian tribes and state governments continued to negotiate gaming compacts, but often at terms dictated by state governments, such as revenue sharing agreements. These compacts tend to violate the spirit and perhaps the letter of the Act. Meanwhile, Indian tribes began to pursue off-reservation gaming opportunities and other options in order to expand gaming revenues, in part, as a result. Tribes and states appear willing to live with the new law and politics of gaming, but the Act leaves the future of these creative solutions uncertain