“It’s called Foxwoods, and at one point it was the largest Indian Casino in the country. “
The single largest casino in the WORLD at the time. The WORLD.
Mohegan Sun is just down the street and at the time it was the third largest in the world...
I used to be in the gaming business (the company I worked for invented the multi-game touchscreen gaming terminal). Connecticut was one of my territory’s. At shift change there were 4,000 staff leaving Foxwoods and 4,000 coming to work, the local PD had to do traffic control.
How the license was approved: Indian Gaming, as it’s called, is regulated by the Dept. of the Interior (DoI).
The Mashantucket Pequot’s compacted with the DoI and the state of Connecticut — promising a 10% (IIRC) take of the slot revenue GUARANTEED at a minimum of $10,000,000 per month! It was a deal too good to pass up for the governments involved. They actually lost money for a short time until the casino was running at 100%. The rake is still 10% but ONLY ON SLOTS! There is NO taxation on table games and that is where the BIG money is.
NY ‘Whales” stopped going to Atlantic City and went north.
I recall being escorted through the high rollers room - Black Jack tables - at one table a man was playing five hands at a $100,000 minimum per bet (and he had a few bets with large stacks of chips)...
In closing it didn’t really have to do with the number of applicants, it was the $10,000,000 monthly guarantee.
As an aside I had to be fingerprinted 14 times a year to hold licenses to ‘touch’ the internals of gaming machines in multiple jurisdictions...
“Have you ever been fingerprinted, buster?”
“Yes.”
“How many times???”
“Lost count after 50...”
“(silence)”