So far, regulated online poker in the United States has been all about the big-name casinos. But the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa First Nation peoples are looking to interrupt this monopoly by running their own online poker operation.
The Lac du Flambeau Chippewa tribe operate the Lake of the Torches Resort Casino in northern Wisconsin. The casino has been pretty successful for the tribe, pulling in large profits every year. Unfortunately, the $12 million profit that Lake of the Torches made in 2009 wasn’t enough to cover a $50 million bond that the tribe defaulted on the previous year. Ever since then, the Lac du Flambeau Chippewas have been struggling financially.
So online poker is looked at as a way to alleviate some of this financial pressure. Poker is definitely a reality too because the tribe’s president, Tom Maulson, said that they “could just flip a switch” and get started. The tribe is already experienced in the online business sector too, having launched a couple of different payday loan operations.
However, there are still big problems standing in the Lac du Flambeau Chippewas‘ way. First off, online gaming isn’t legal in the state of Wisconsin so people would have to be on the actual reservation to play internet poker. This leads us to the second problem in that the tribe’s poker site would get very few players if they only relied on reservation visitors.
So in order to make online gaming worth the effort, the Lac du Flambeau Chippewas would want to launch a joint operation with other tribes in the Tribal Internet Gaming Alliance (TIGA). This would allow them to combine player pools from reservations around the United States, thus creating bigger poker tournaments and promotions.
It’s worth mentioning that at this time, the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Native Americans have no immediate plans to launch internet poker. But this matter will certainly stay on their minds until other TIGA members are ready to open operations.