By Evan Oscherwitz | Arizona Capitol Times
The legalization of sports betting means the Arizona’s Indian tribes will lose their monopoly on the state’s gambling industry, but they still stand to gain considerable benefits from the new legislation.
Signed by Gov. Doug Ducey on Apr. 15, the legislation makes several amendments to Arizona’s existing gaming compact, and most notably allows up to 10 professional sports franchises and up to 10 Indigenous nations to operate their own sportsbooks.
While the finite number of licenses means that more than half of Arizona’s native peoples will be excluded from conducting their own event-wagering operations, measures have been taken to ensure that everyone gets a piece of th One such “ingenious” measure is the establishment of a trust fund for small rural communities whose geographic isolation prevents them from running large-scale gambling operations. Under the conditions of the bill, Indigenous nations located within the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas will be required to deposit a portion of their annual revenues into the fund.
