Some Indian casino operators near Sacramento are mulling the possibility that their market may be nearing saturation.
Rich Hoffman, CEO of the Jackson Rancheria Casino Resort in Amador County last week told the Sacramento Bee, “There are a finite number of gamblers. The more times you split that pie up, the fewer customers you have.”
He was commenting after the Bureau of Indian Affairs agreed to put land into trust in Elk Grove for the Wilton Rancheria’s proposed $400 million casino complex.
He was also referring to Yuba City, north of Sacramento where the Enterprise Rancheria has hit a legal snag in its efforts to build a casino due to lawsuits from rival casino tribes.
The problem for existing casinos like that owned by Jackson Rancheria is that some of the latter-day arrivals are building nearer to urban centers, which is likely to siphon customers from the older facilities.
At Cache Creek Casino in Yolo County, customers must drive along a windy country road. At the Red Hawk Casino in El Dorado County, the casino is built in the middle of a rural area. Likewise Thunder Valley Casino, although near state highways, is at least located in a relatively well-to-do Placer County.
Gaming industry expert Alan Meister, who publishes an annual look at Indian gaming, told the Bee, “Each of those has that potential to crowd the market and negatively impact other facilities in the area. There can be a break point where there is too much. I don’t know when that break point is.”
Lucy Dadayan, a senior policy analyst at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, is willing to say that both commercial and Indian casino markets are saturated, and that they are now feeding off each other. This has been exacerbated by the fact that the Millennials are less interested in slot machines and blackjack then their parents and grandparents. They are more interested in movies and travel, she says.
Such warnings do not prevent tribes who haven’t been able to build casinos before from wanting to get a piece of the pie—even if the pie is shrinking.
Raymond Hitchcock, chairman of the Wilton Rancheria, argues that his tribe’s casino would be the only one in Sacramento County, which has a population of 2.5 million.
Doug Elmets, spokesman for Thunder Valley Casino, whose own casino has not been affected by the recent blossoming of Northern California casinos, told the Bee, “What’s required of a successful casino is creative marketing,” noting that the United Auburn Indian Community is constantly upgrading its facility to emphasize that it is a destination.
California currently has 59 casinos and is second only to Nevada in gaming revenues.
