GLOBAL GAMING BUSINESS PODCAST: Joe Valandra, Chairman and CEO, Great Luck Gaming

This week, the GGB Podcast features a discussion with Joe Valandra, the chairman and CEO of Great Luck Gaming on the progress being made to allow tribes to offer Class II gaming online.

Late last year, Great Luck Gaming announced a partnership with the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel, California, to offer Class II gaming—bingo—on the internet. Joe Valandra, CEO of Great Luck LLC and member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, believes that Class II gaming is permitted under IGRA because the servers where the decisions are made are on tribal land. Great Luck had planned an iPoker product but decided to hold off on that initially because bingo is clearly a Class II game and a better legal case for the company. Valandra, the former general counsel for the National Indian Gaming Commission, also weighs in the recent focus on that organization and how it is performing its duties under the IGRA strictures. He spoke with GGB Publisher Roger Gros at the ICE trade show in London in February.