Nine WA Tribes Entered in Federal Registry, Sports Betting Set for NFL Season

• Nine Washington State Native Tribes Now Set to Offer NFL Sports Betting 
• Federal Registry Marks Final Step in Legalizing Sports Gambling in Washington
• A Few More To-Do’s Before the WA Sports Books Open to Bettors

Nine Washington State Native Tribes Now Set to Offer NFL Sports Betting

The total number of Washington state native tribes now fully entered into the Federal Registry is nine, all officially slated to be participants in the upcoming legal sports betting operation in that state that is set to launch in the next week as planned all along.

As we previously covered in Washington Sports Betting Regulators Approve Licensing Rules, Eying Fall Launch, the original goal of WA state legislators, tribal leaders, and industry experts was to provide access to legal sports gambling to Evergreen State bettors in time for the start of the NFL’s 2021 regular season set to begin on Thursday, September 9.

The list of nine Washington tribes now entered into the Federal Register includes:

• Snoqualmie
• Cowlitz
• Lummi Nation
• Puyallup
• Spokane
• Squaxin Island
• Stillaguamish
• Suquamish
• Tulalip

This now completes a multi-step legal process that has taken since last year to work through.

Federal Registry Marks Final Step in Legalizing Sports Gambling in Washington

There were several tricky steps for Washington legislators and tribal leaders to complete to bring legal sports betting to their state, a process that started last year when Governor Jay Inslee signed the bill that authorizes sports wagering but in tribal casinos only.

After that, the state tribes had to submit any changes to their current gaming agreements to the Washington State Gaming Commission for approval, then that was sent back to the tribe and then submitted to the governor to green light, then finally entered into the federal registry.

Washington is one of the few states with actual laws prohibiting real money online casino gambling and now under its new sports wagering law, mobile app betting is not allowed unless the wagers are made on tribal casino premises.

A Few More To-Do’s Before the WA Sportsbooks Open to Bettors

Before the start of the NFL season on Thursday, all nine tribes have a few more items to check off their to-do list before they can officially launch their operations and invite Washington gamblers to start placing bets.

For one, the physical sportsbooks inside each casino that are being built right now must be finalized before they can be safely opened to the public, and also licenses for workers and the platforms they are using must be officially put into place.

According to Snoqualmie Casino CEO and President Stanford Le, those are all that is standing in way of an on-time start.

Once our vendors are licensed and our own team members have licensed as well as the software, we can launch the sportsbook.

All doable tasks with plenty of motivated players working to get them done so they can all begin generating a projected yearly state revenue of $38 million, money that will go a long way towards helping the residents of Washington in a time when financial strains are at a peak.