Maverick Gaming LLC has sold one of the more than 30 casinos it has in Washington state, where it is headquartered. Whether this has anything to do with Maverick’s faltering legal campaign to overturn the state law that gives sports betting exclusively to Indian casinos is unknown.
According to the Registry, which consulted Pierce County records, the casino Maverick sold was the 21,624-square-foot Palace and Chips casino in Lakewood, which it originally purchased in 2016 for $4.5 million.
The buyer was Oak Street Real Estate Capital out of Chicago and the selling price was $27 million.
The single-parcel property includes two structures, with gaming tables, a poker room and dining. It is located near Interstate 5.
Palace and Chips is the second property Oak Street has purchased from Maverick. In 2022 it bought the Macau Casino, also in Lakewood.
Meanwhile, Maverick is still pursuing its legal challenge to Washington’s tribal casino monopoly of sports betting. And things are not going its way.
Recently the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled that Maverick’s claim against tribal casinos was invalid and threw it out.
The lawsuit had been filed to overturn both the legislation that established the tribal monopoly and the tribal state gaming compacts that enshrined them.
The judge, David Estudillo, noted Maverick’s failure to include the Shoalwater Tribe in the complaint. Maverick’s CEO Eric Persson is a member of that tribe. However, the court ruled that the tribe’s exclusion from the lawsuit was justification to dismiss because the tribes cannot be sued due to sovereign immunity.
The complaint named Governor Jay Inslee, Attorney General Bob Ferguson and the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Maverick, which also owns casinos in Nevada and Colorado, argues that the 2020 compacts violate the equal protection clause of the 5th Amendment. That clause prevents states from enacting laws that arbitrarily discriminate.
The Shoalwater Tribe filed a request with the court to dismiss the case because the lawsuit failed to include the tribe in the case as a concerned party. The tribe argued that its interest might be harmed if it wasn’t included in the complaint. The court agreed that the Interior Department could not effectively defend the tribe’s interests.
Maverick has indicated that it intends to file an appeal.
