For the August issue of Global Gaming Business magazine, TIG Senior Vice President of Tribal Services Chris Irwin broke down the continued diversification of tribal economies. Read an excerpt below and the full article here.
Over the past several decades, Native American tribes in the United States have made incredible economic strides, in no small part due to the operation of casinos on their lands. These ventures have infused tribal economies with much-needed resources to invest in critical infrastructure, education, health care, and other vital community services to support their people. However, despite overall growth in gaming revenues, tribes are beginning to feel the squeeze of new competition. Markets are increasingly saturated, with fewer opportunities for profitable development, particularly within the confines of reservation boundaries.
Ongoing gaming expansion in Illinois will threaten tribal operations in nearby Wisconsin, like Milwaukee’s Potawatomi Hotel & Casino. The potential introduction of multibillion-dollar integrated resorts in Texas looms over tribes in southern Oklahoma who have enjoyed near exclusivity over the massive Dallas gaming market. In Minnesota, electronic pull-tabs, which have proliferated under the umbrella of charitable gaming despite effectively being a mobile slot machine, are projected to close $2.3 billion in sales this year (or more than $340 million in revenue at a 15 percent hold) despite tribal exclusivity over casino gaming in the market.
And these are only the land-based threats, to say nothing of the emerging online casino landscape likely to be dominated by large commercial operators. With this growing threat to their sustainability, tribes are increasingly focused on economic diversification. It would be impossible to share all the ways tribes are working to diversify their cash flows in a short article, but here we discuss several examples of tribes working across varying lines of business that we think are illustrative.
Continue reading about the opportunities some tribal enterprises have pursued in the tourism, renewable energy, and cannabis sectors here.
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