Native American Casinos To Create Online Poker Network?

Whether state by state run online poker operations in the US would garner a big enough player pool to be lucrative has continued to be a concern for potential gambling companies stateside. Now, however, Native American tribes may have found the answer and are currently considering pooling their resources and working together to provide internet poker and other casino games across the country.
Native Americans took their first big step into the casino industry after President Reagan signed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) in 1988. Since then, Indian gaming revenue has skyrocketed and in 2011 there were 240 tribes running 460 gambling operations generating $27 billion in total annual each year.
The Native Americans tribes could now soon be well placed to take advantage of the country’s fledgling online gambling market, which could be worth around $7.4 billion in poker, casino and bingo gross winnings within the next five years.
Only last year, The Northern Bear Casino became the country’s first real-money tribal online casino, with its CEO announcing at the time: “I’ll be operating under the same inherent, treaty, constitutional and sovereign rights as when I opened the first Indian casino in Canada on February 26, 1993. Our forefathers traded globally 100-plus years ago and entrepreneurship has been in our DNA for 10,000-plus years. This is what November 6, 2012, is going to stand for.”
The fact that states like Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware have started regulating their own online gambling markets has forcedthe tribes to examine more closely their own options, and commenting on the potential alliance of native American tribes, executive director of public affairs for the San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission Indians, Jacob Coin, said:
“We’re starting to see more force behind the idea of developing Internet coalitions. It’s a positive development in that it means tribes are finally beginning to embrace the technology.”