Interactive
Isle of Man – The Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma gets Isle of Man licence
By Phil - 25 September 2017
The Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma has secured a gaming license in the Isle of Man.
Ioway Internet Gaming Enterprise Limited, an Isle of Man company, was issued an online gaming license by the IOM Gambling Supervision Commission on September 7, 2017.
The Iowa Tribe said an online poker site, known as PokerTribe.com, would go live sometime in Autumn.
Iowa Tribe Chairman Bobby Walkup said: “The Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma is proud to be the first Native American tribe to secure an international online gaming license. The process has taken longer than we may have envisioned when we began this journey, but, because we are a Native American tribe and held to higher gaming legal and regulatory standards, we had to ensure that we met all these standards. We are in the final stages of the sale and have been working diligently with Universal Entertainment Group to finalize the transfer of the online gaming assets, which includes the software license agreement, to the company that has an internationally-known brand. This new relationship will be beneficial to the Tribe and the new software owner as PokerTribe.com enters the international online gaming market.”
In November 2015, an arbitrator held that the Iowa Tribe could offer games approved under the Tribe’s compact with the State of Oklahoma over the internet from Iowa Tribe Indian country to players located outside the United States and within a jurisdiction where such internet gaming was lawful. A federal district court in Oklahoma City subsequently certified the arbitration award in April 2016. The license application was submitted in February 2017. The application was approved on June 13, 2017 at a meeting of the Gambling Supervision Commission attended by a number of Iowa Tribe representatives.
“Following the federal court certification of the arbitration award,” Mr. Walkup said. “We believed that to comply with the arbitrator’s decision it would be necessary to obtain a license in one or more jurisdictions. After considerable research, we chose to secure our initial license in the Isle of Man. While we are excited about receiving the license, we really do not
