Member Updates from the ND Gaming Alliance

Good Thursday afternoon everyone.  Hope this finds you all well.

As usual, ND Gaming Alliance wants to include all our members in what we are actively doing and invite all of you to reply and continue to give suggestions.  I can tell you the majority of the items we work on are at the suggestion of our members and invite you all to continue to express to us your concerns in the charitable gaming industry and areas in which we can help.

Currently, we continue to work with the AG office to clean up some loopholes and to possibly have some clarification of some administrative rules.  This is an ongoing process and as I stated, we encourage you all to share with us any changes you would like to see. 

ND Gaming Alliance also recently met with the ND Hospitality Association Board of Directors on the issue of improving the rent structure for establishments for the E-Tab machines.  The goal of the meeting was to find common ground between charities and hospitality so we could work together during the next legislative session rather than oppose each other.  To prepare for that meeting, I reached out to about a dozen of our members (both charities and hospitality) to gather information.  There was much concern that smaller charities would not be able to absorb increases as easily as larger charities and the ND Gaming Alliance will keep this line of communication open with all those involved in our industry.   I highly encourage all our members to reach out to us  and express their thoughts regarding this issue.  Our organization exists to make charitable gaming as good as possible in our state and to mutually benefit hospitality, charities, veteran’s organizations, fraternal, manufacturers, and distributors.  If we all work together, we can accomplish that.  Here is a link where you can send in your comments.  Just scroll to the bottom of the main page where you can submit them.   https://ndgamingalliance.com/

Recently, the Tribal and State Relations Committee met at Spirit Lake Tribe to discuss several items.  Here is that link if you would like to watch yourself.  The section regarding gaming begins at the 1:30 pm mark where you can click and view.  The whole clip is ½ hour long, but I’d just like to point out some of the things that were said and that the ND Gaming Alliance will continue to follow.   https://video.legis.nd.gov/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20210901/-1/21581

The ND Gaming Alliance will agree with the tribes in North Dakota that charitable gaming needs to be fair and regulated.  But some points in that video that was of interest and/or concern were the following. 

The first few minutes there were a couple of comments in regards to lack of regulation and at the 1:42 and 1:49  marks, there was the insinuation of “illegal activity” as the chairman stated.  This was disturbing to us as you all know how regulated the charitable gaming industry is and to date, we have not been made aware of any illegal activity of which they stated. 

At 1:45, the chairman stated “limitations to the number of E-Tab machines” as a possible solution.  As you all know, there are already limitations on E-Tab machines as to the number of machines that can be in a facility, the number of sites that a charity can have, and so forth.

At 1:54, Senator Oehlke referred to a “five-minute waiting period” to slow down the play of the machines.  To be honest, we are not sure what he means by that but will be reaching out to him to find out. 

At 1:59, Representative Jones states that “there will be some sort of slowdown” which of course concerns us as to what his intentions are or what kind of slowdown he is referring to. 

ND Gaming Alliance will continue to monitor this and any other subjects regarding charitable gaming.

We are also close to adding a “News” section to our website to further provide you all with any current news in the charitable gaming industry.  Keep an eye out for that!

As usual, please reach out to us with any questions.  We always enjoy hearing from our members and continue to work hard to have our industry thrive.  Until next time, hope you all have a wonderful profitable day.

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