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After announcing it was in the process of entering the controversial payday loan business, Wisconsin’s Lac du Flambeau Chippewa tribe may be eyeing more lucrative business ventures, specifically online gambling.
Tom Maulson, the tribe's blunt-talking president, dismisses critics who see gambling and high-interest, short-term lending as businesses that prey on the poor. "It's legal to do, and we're doing it legally," Maulson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
"The Internet is a robust environment to grow our economy, and we're looking for ways to leverage (the tribe's) sovereignty in a responsible manner," said Brent McFarland, the Lac du Flambeau's director of business development. "We see the Internet as a tremendous opportunity to do that."
The Tribes already see huge potential in a booming online gambling sector thanks in no small part to the huge success of New Jersey’s legalized Web gambling industry, which launched late last month.
Maulson suggests that his tribe would not begin offering online gambling unless it were to become legal in the state of Wisconsin or federally.
"We could just flip a switch," he said, should any laws pass.
But the Chippewa tribe could ultimately form a compact with states such as New Jersey that already have legalized the activity. Or they could join forces with other Tribes. The Tribal Internet Gaming Alliance is a group hoping to launch a multi-tribe online casino via Internet connections available within the boundaries of a tribe's reservation.
One Oklahoma City tribe will begin offering real money online gambling to citizens outside the US beginning in early 2014.
- Gilbert Horowitz, Gambling911.com
