Potawatomi reservation casino in Kansas is now being managed by the tribe
By RICK ALM
POTAWATOMI RESERVATION | The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation’s Kansas casino “reopened” in ceremonies Sunday.
The reservation casino north of Topeka opened in 1996 and from 1998 until Sunday had been managed by Harrah’s Entertainment Inc., whose second five-year management contract with the tribe was due to expire in early 2008.
Now the tribe assumes all management responsibility.
“We have come a long way since opening this casino,” said tribal chairwoman Tracy Stanhoff. “Today we say farewell to the past and begin a new and exciting journey, yet another important step along our Nation’s continued path to toward economic self-sufficiency.”
Stanhoff said the tribal council already is discussing adding retail shops and might also move its nearby but recently closed bingo parlor inside the main facility.
Meanwhile, a novel player promotion at Prairie Band starting this week is a giveaway game that Missouri players can only dream about.
Stanhoff said the casino’s “Superstrike Mystery Jackpot” will hand out an estimated $140,000 through Sept. 4 to scores of lucky players.
Any electronic game player using a casino player’s club card is eligible to win random jackpots several times daily from $25 to $500. Several players are expected to claim progressive jackpots that will start at $5,000 and are “guaranteed” to pay off before the total builds to $15,000, and then start over.
Progressive jackpots are standard casino fare and grow through electronic earmarking of a penny, more or less, from every spin of every eligible game. The Prairie Band game is different because it operates independent of the slot machine.
A player could lose a spin on the slot machine but simultaneously win the house’s promotional side jackpot.
The “Lucky Coin” technology is patented by industry leader International Game Technology and is in use in 14 jurisdictions worldwide as part of its standard casino accounting software package.
No Missouri casinos use IGT’s software, however, because it wasn’t designed for the peculiarities of Missouri’s unique-in-the-world $500 loss limit.
That is changing, said Nevada-based IGT vice president Reed Alewel. Isle of Capri Casinos and Herbst Gaming, with five Missouri casinos between them, use IGT software at casinos in other states, and Alewel said they are looking to standardize in Missouri.
Once IGT tweaks its software to meet Missouri’s accounting needs, and if the jackpot game is approved by state regulators, Isle’s three casinos and Herbt’s two properties could be the only gambling boats in Missouri able to offer house jackpots.
But that ultimately depends on IGT’s pending lawsuit against competitors seeking to market similar house jackpot games.
Tribal take slips
Almost any U.S. industry would be ecstatic to post 11 percent annual growth in sales. But perhaps not the tribal casino industry.
Coming off a 10-year run of 15 percent average growth that followed an initial eight years of 64 percent average growth, 2006 marked tribal gambling’s slowest year since the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act launched the industry in 1988, according to a new report.
Tribal casino gambling revenues grew at their smallest-ever pace of 11 percent in 2006, to a record $25.5 billion, according to the annual Indian Gaming Industry Report by Alan Meister, an economist with the Los Angeles-based Analysis Group. |
