For this first time in years the National Indian Gaming Commission has announced that tribal casinos in the US saw a decrease in fiscal earnings. The gap between earnings in 2020 and 2019 was $6.7 billion. Overall, fiscal earnings in 2020 were $27.8 billion.
Nevertheless, tribal casinos are not overly pessimistic about these numbers, and they believe that the industry will recover as soon as the pandemic is brought under control. Just as a comparison to show how badly COVID-19 affected tribal casinos, in the year before the pandemic began, the industry earned $34 billion.
“The last 10 years of steady growth helped to make it clear that the significant decline in revenue for the fiscal year 2020 was a result of the pandemic,” said the chairman of the National Indian Gaming Commission, Sequoyah Simermeyer.
Some casinos were forced to close for six months or more, and some even remain closed. However, the commission believes that 95% of all locations have opened up already.
Many tribes have struck deals with sports betting operators as states move into legal and regulated industries. They hope to tap into the US’s fast-growing sports betting market and use their expertise and customer-bases to their advantage.
Tribes use their gambling revenue to put back into their communities, in the form of education, health and infrastructure.