"The federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act became law in October 1988, and a movie entitled “Field of Dreams” was released six months later. The former established the foundation for what has become a monster gaming industry. The latter was a fantasy about a man living in Iowa who built a baseball field in the middle of his farm.

While these two events ostensibly had nothing to do with each other, they ultimately became synonymous in the minds of many, for Indian gaming soon adopted as an unofficial motto the signature idea from the movie: “Build it and they will come.”

So tribes built casinos wherever they could, and the people came. Some of the tribes built mega-casinos with attendant major hotels and shopping malls, and the people came. The surge was onward and upward without regard to when and where it might stop. Indeed, two of the largest casinos in the world – Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun – were constructed in Southern Connecticut, and both prospered.

And the financial community quickly caught on that business with tribes was prosperous, profitable and ostensibly safe. Money was available for tribal casino projects, even though conventional securitization was not, since tribal lands and buildings are in trust status and cannot be mortgaged. Security interests had to be protected through carefully constructed loan documents but ultimately depended on debt service coming primarily from casino revenues. However, this was not seen as risky since it was widely assumed as a matter of “conventional wisdom” – as well as the history of the gaming industry’s financial performance – that casinos were immune from financial downturns. The terms Indian gaming and expansion became synonymous. New and larger tribal casinos were developed and other still larger casinos planned; meanwhile, many existing tribal casinos were significantly expanded to offer much broader gaming opportunities, as well as hotels, vast dining and entertainment venues, and casino-connected shopping malls previously seen only in Las Vegas.

“Build it and they will come” went from motto to mantra for the entire Indian gaming industry and its business partners in the financial community. Conventional wisdom served everyone quite well, at least as long as financial times were good."

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Dennis J. Whittlesey: Easy tribal casino financing: RIP? (Lexology 10/7)