Casino Tips

Read more about the
Las Vegas 2024 Super
Bowl Streaker!

New Mexico has a bitter gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in 1990 to draft a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the task force arrived at an agreement with two important local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the contract with the American Indian tribes, anti-wagering forces were able to tie the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby denying the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.

It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full contract between the Government of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo business has increased since 1999. That year, New Mexico not for profit game owners brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.

Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All kinds of providers look for a bit of the pie. With hope, the politicos are through batting over gaming as an important matter like they did in the 90’s. That is probably wishful thinking.