The National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) announced last week that the combined revenues of Indian gaming reached .9 billion last year, the highest ever. This was a 5 percent increase from the year before, and represented the largest increase in a decade.
NIGC Chairman Jonodev O. Chaudhuri in a press release, said, “The strong regulation that tribes as well as federal regulators and other stake holders provides has played a key role in the stability and growth of the Indian gaming industry by providing consistency and predictability.”
The reported was generated from data collected from the nation’s 238 gaming tribes, who operate 474 casinos.
The report stated that a, “majority of tribes, 57 percent, generate less than $25 million per year in gross gaming revenue. And 20 percent of the total 474 tribal gaming operations produce less than $3 million per year.”
Chaudhuri made the announcement at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Cabazon, California, which is of historic significance to Indian gaming as the casino whose efforts blazed a trail followed by other Indian casinos due to the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling of California v. Cabazon, which confirmed the right of tribes to engage in gaming on the reservation.
Brenda Soulliere, chairman of the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, hailed the figures. “We’ve been through in the last 10 years a horrendous recession. A lot of people have lost jobs and lost homes. We are proud to be able to provide jobs here and we were actually a tribe that never laid anyone off,” she said, adding, “They’re not really profits. They’re funds that come to the tribal government and the tribal government is able to provide basic things that people take for granted like education, health care, things like that.”
The NIGC does not release financial information for individual casinos. It noted that the 71 casinos in California and northern Nevada generated $7.9 billion in 2015, or about $111.3 million each casino on average. This compared to the Eastern seaboard, where the 31 casinos made an average of $225.8 million per casino.
Casino revenues have only fallen once in the last 20 years, between 2008-2009, when the financial markets went into freefall and the country entered a prolonged recession.
A separate study released earlier this year by economist Alan Meister looked at 2014, but uses the NIGC figures as a guide. It noted that the top two Indian gaming states generated 39 percent of all revenues, while the top ten states accounted for 85 percent.
Meister said that the Indian casino industry was growing faster than the commercial casino industry and recovered faster from the losses of the Great Recession.
