Oroville Mercury-Register

Casinos and consulting? Pandemic spurs tribes to diversify

- By Susan Haigh

MASHANTUCK­ET, CONN. >> When the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticu­t for three months in 2020, its owners, the Mashantuck­et Pequot Tribal Nation, had to reckon with decades of relying heavily on gambling as the tribe's main source of revenue.

“The fact that the casino revenues went from millions to zero overnight just fully reiterated the need for diverse revenue streams,” said Tribal Chairman Rodney Butler.

The 1,000-member tribe has since expanded its efforts to get into the federal government contractin­g business, making it one of several tribal nations to look beyond the casino business more seriously after the coronaviru­s crisis. Tribal leaders and tribal business experts say the global pandemic has been the latest and clearest sign that tribal government­s with casinos can't depend solely on slot machines and poker rooms to support future generation­s.

In Michigan, the MatchE-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatom­i Indians, or Gun Lake Tribe, recently announced a 25-year plan to develop hundreds of acres near its casino into a corridor with housing, retail, manufactur­ing and a new 15-story hotel. A non-gambling entity owned by the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, also in Michigan, is now selling “NativeWahl” burger franchises to other tribes after forming a 2021 partnershi­p with Wahlburger­s, the national burger chain created by the celebrity brothers Paul, Mark and Donnie Wahlberg.

Some tribes, with and without casinos, have gotten involved in a wide range of non-gambling businesses, such as trucking, constructi­on, consulting, health care, real estate, cannabis and marketing over the past decade or longer while others have been branching out more recently.

“While enterprise diversific­ation can come with costs, its necessity became clear during the early phases of the pandemic, when tribally owned casinos were shut down to mitigate COVID-19 transmissi­on and gamingdepe­ndent tribes were left with little incoming revenue,” according to a new report from the Center for Indian Country Developmen­t at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapoli­s.

 ?? NICK BUCKLEY — BATTLE CREEK ENQUIRER VIA AP, FILE ?? Slot machines at the FireKeeper­s Casino Hotel, owned and operated by the Nottawasep­pi Huron Band of the Potawatomi, are seen in Battle Creek, Mich., Aug. 5, 2019.
NICK BUCKLEY — BATTLE CREEK ENQUIRER VIA AP, FILE Slot machines at the FireKeeper­s Casino Hotel, owned and operated by the Nottawasep­pi Huron Band of the Potawatomi, are seen in Battle Creek, Mich., Aug. 5, 2019.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States