Each state has different laws when it comes to gambling and slot machines, but the one thing that many states have in common is their tribal casinos. The tribal casinos take in millions of dollars each year, money that supports not only the tribe, but also the state itself. However, how the breakdown of casinos plays out is a different story. Some states have a lot of casinos, others barely any. With a report released by the National Indian Gaming Commission showed that the casinos are making quite a bit of money, that money is not nearly evenly distributed among the nation. The report showed that in 2005, tribal gaming brought in $22.6 billion dollars. To give you an idea of the scope of that, look at Nevada – the home of Las Vegas – they only made roughly $11 billion. With their slot machines alone, the tribes brought in $530 million.

However, it can also be seen that the amount of gaming is not even, with some states like New Mexico getting a much smaller piece of the action. They only have 20 Indian gaming operations, and ended up making about $42 million of that amount. There are other states that bring in much more, such as California and Nevada. There is also another region made up of Montana, Wyoming, ND, SD, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan – this group had the most casinos coming in at 118. The Southern States: New Mexico, lower Nevada, Colorado, Arizona – they only have 48 casinos. So you can see there is a very large difference in the number of slot machines bringing in money to the lower half of the country, and slot machines are where the money is these days.

However, some think that it really doesn’t matter what part of the county you are in, if you are in the business of slot machines then you should be in a different business for you are hurting everyone else. However, the tribes see it differently. They see it as a way to make money for their people, their programs, and other business ventures on tribal land. They say that those tribes that are not near a major city can only count on the slot machines to bring in their money as no other venture will work for them.

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