Washington – At some Indian casinos, they’re not playing your grandmother’s church basement bingo anymore.
Now the game is video bingo, played at blinking, whirring consoles virtually indistinguishable from slot machines.
Slots are subject to state approval and limits. Bingo machines aren’t.
Concerned that tribes are blurring the line between the two, federal regulators are trying to clarify the difference.
New rules proposed by the National Indian Gaming Commission would slow play at video bingo terminals, mandate more player participation and require screen space to be devoted to a bingo display, making it more clear to customers that they are playing bingo rather than a slot machine.
But the draft rules face angry opposition from Indian tribes.
Some rely on video bingo to supplement a state-allowed quota of slot machines, or they use the devices because they can’t get state permission to run slots.
“This is serious. This is people’s lives at stake here,” Marjorie Mejia, chairwoman of Northern California’s Lytton Band of Pomo Indians, told gaming commission officials at a hearing Tuesday. “These proposed regulations are of great concern.”
The Lytton Band hasn’t won permission from California lawmakers for slot machines. It gets all its revenue from 937 electronic bingo machines. Tribal officials fear such machines would no longer be allowed under the new rules, and the slower machines that would be permitted wouldn’t appeal to gamblers.
“It’s really termination for my people,” Mejia said.
Mejia was one of a series of tribal officials offering emotional testimony against the proposed rules, which come as tribal gambling has exploded into a $22 billion-a-year industry.
Perhaps 20 percent of that revenue comes from video bingo and similar machines, the Indian gaming commission has reported.
