"Documents released in the press clearly show the involvement of some of the Indian tribes with the famous lobbyist Jack Abramoff and even the White House. We will not go into details about these transactions, but in a nutshell, the Agua Caliente Indian Tribe has been "working" pretty close with the above mentioned. Literally millions of dollars exchanged hands, according to the documents, to help the tribe in their gambling business. There is no word on Internet gambling in the papers, but that's not the point.

The point is that we are currently witnessing the biggest ever casino gambling expansion by the Indian tribes in the United States. And there is plenty of proof that some tribes have been greasing the wheels.

And the question is - have they greased the Internet gambling bill? Let's face it, the Internet gambling companies are hurting the land based casino business. Not as much as they would have 10 years ago, when casinos were all about gambling, and now they focus more on entertainment, such as shows, concerts, boxing matches, etc, but still a big chunk of possible land based casino revenue goes offshore. So could the Indian tribes afford to expand their gambling venues to record numbers, as it is in California, for example, if the financial barriers on the Internet gambling were not in place? We think not.

Of course, online gambling cannot put the land based casinos out of business, but if we assume that the figure $8 billion per year spent at the Internet gambling websites by U.S. citizens is correct, and let's say that at least half of that number is now cut-off, and further assume that half would now go the land based gambling houses - that's $2 billion more each year to split among the land based casinos. That's a lot of money, on top on what the casinos already make - Nevada casinos have been showing record numbers, for example, in the past few months."

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Internet Gambling: How involved are the Indian tribes? (Online Gambling Paper 5/24)