The Chicken Ranch Tribe of Me-Wuk Indians recently launched Playbawk, a player parlay, bingo-based, sports betting-themed app, and are hoping other tribes will join them.
Let’s delve into the key aspects behind this release and its potential impact on the online sportsbooks’ landscape.
A New Way to Play
Sports betting has been a contentious issue in California with the tribal nations refusing to cede control of gambling in the Golden State. Meanwhile, national operators like FanDuel and DraftKings seek to work with the tribes but want their full slice of the heartiest gaming pie in the country.
The sides are at a stalemate, as the Native American tribes were victorious in defeating Prop 27 –an online sports betting bill from 2022– and have stressed that sports betting, retail and online, will be on their terms. It is unlikely there will be any sports betting initiatives until 2026 but that hasn’t stopped the Chicken Ranch Tribe from conjuring an innovative app that resembles sports betting parlays in a bingo form called Playbawk.
Because the Chicken Ranch Tribe of Me-Wuk Indians has a Class II gambling license, they oversee regulations with governance from the National Indian Gaming Commission. Thus, they are allowed to promote this new product, Playbawk, and those who are physically on the Chicken Ranch’s tribal land can play the game with real money through the mobile app.
The tribe is hoping their new twist on an old game will catch fire with the other tribes. If so, the Chicken Ranch Tribe will be getting a cut of the profits from those tribes that offer the product to their own customers. Because Class II gaming licenses don’t fall under a compact, they do not have to share any revenue derived from those games that fall under that category with the state.
The Chicken Ranch Tribe believes Playbawk is a win-win for all involved and that is precisely what they were pitching to the tribal members attending the Western Indian Gaming Conference at Pechanga Resort Casino two weeks ago.
Chicken Ranch Tribal Chairman Lloyd Mathiesen said, “This allows people of California to get their sports itch out of their system, while at the same time allowing it to be with each tribe itself. It’s a way for us to be able to have sports betting.”
How Does It Work?
Chicken Ranch teamed up with Vetnos, a sports gaming solutions provider, to design PlaySqor, which is the actual name of the game but each tribe can call it whatever they want. Chicken Ranch has branded PlaySqor to Playbawk but the name will differ from tribe to tribe, yet they will all be using the PlaySqor app.
The customer will have to choose a player in each of nine head-to-head matchups which could be, for example, Shohei Ohtani vs. Bryce Harper in most home runs for that day. There will be nine such pick’em offerings and from there the customer will put each selection in one of the nine squares on a tic-tac-toe board with their best bet being in the center square.
For every three right picks that are lined up in sequence, the bettor will get a payout. A perfect score would be eight tic-tac-toes on one board, which would pay the maximum of 32-1. A minimum of $1 and a maximum bet of $20 is allowed with the payouts as follows:
- 1 correct tic-tac-toe: 0.5 to 1
- 2 correct tic-tac-toes: 1 to 1
- 3 correct tic-tac-toes: 2 to 1
- 4 correct tic-tac-toes: 4 to 1
- 5 correct tic-tac-toes: 8 to 1
- 6 correct tic-tac-toes: 16 to 1
- 8 correct tic-tac-toes: 32 to 1
“We’re the ones who will control Vetnos in the state of California,” Mathiesen said. “So, whoever wants this, has to come and talk to us, and of course, we want everyone to do it. We want other tribes to do it because we make our money from passing this on to other tribes.”
