Revenue Sharing or Ownership: First Nations Gaming's 2026 Fork

Two models for First Nations participation in Canadian gaming are now running side by side, and 2026 is the year the contrast has become impossible to ignore. British Columbia distributes a fixed share of provincial gaming revenue to eligible First Nations through a long-term partnership arrangement. At the same time, individual First Nations have been buying casinos outright, converting themselves from beneficiaries of a revenue stream into owners of the assets that generate it. First Nations gaming revenue sharing and direct ownership are not mutually exclusive, but they allocate risk, control and upside very differently.

Under British Columbia's long-term agreement, eligible First Nations share in seven per cent of the province's total net gaming revenue annually, distributed through a limited partnership structure. The province has described the arrangement as directing roughly $3 billion to First Nations communities over 25 years. Payments are formula-driven, predictable and require no operating expertise, no capital and no exposure to the performance of any single property.

The ownership track looks nothing like that. Since early 2025 a number of British Columbia First Nations have acquired casino properties from commercial operators, with the Snuneymuxw First Nation emerging as the largest First Nations casino holder in the country after a series of purchases. Those transactions convey management control, the full economics of the property and, unavoidably, the full downside as well.

What First Nations gaming revenue sharing actually delivers

The strengths of the revenue-sharing model are the strengths of any diversified, formula-based entitlement. Distributions do not depend on the fortunes of one building. A community with no gaming facility within hundreds of kilometres receives the same formula treatment as one adjacent to a major property. Administrative burden is low, and the funds arrive as unrestricted own-source revenue that communities can direct to housing, education, health or governance without program conditions attached.

The limitations are equally structural. A percentage share of net gaming revenue is a share of a number the recipient does not control. If provincial land-based revenue erodes — through online substitution, demographic change or policy shifts — the distribution falls with it, and First Nations have no seat at the table where the decisions driving that erosion are made. That vulnerability has been on open display in Alberta, where the province's July iGaming launch was paired with a two per cent carve-out of online gross revenue for First Nations, and where community leaders have questioned publicly whether that carve-out offsets the losses their land-based charitable gaming revenue is likely to absorb. We covered the mechanics of that arrangement in our report on Alberta's iGaming revenue share.

Revenue sharing converts gaming into a transfer payment with a better name. Ownership converts it into a business — with everything that implies in both directions.

Why ownership is attracting capital anyway

Buying a casino gives a First Nation three things a revenue share cannot. The first is control over the asset's future: decisions about capital investment, amenity mix, digital strategy and whether the property adapts to online competition rest with the owner. The second is the full margin rather than a slice of a provincial aggregate. The third, and arguably the most consequential over a generation, is a balance-sheet asset that supports borrowing capacity and further diversification.

That third point explains why financing intermediaries have become central to the trend. Access to institutional-grade debt has allowed First Nations to compete for properties on commercial timelines rather than waiting for capital to accumulate, a shift we examined in our look at acquisition capital for First Nations casino purchases. The acquisitions themselves and the reshaping of the British Columbia ownership map are covered in our report on First Nations casino acquisitions in British Columbia.

The risks are real and should not be understated. Casino acquisition prices in the current market embed assumptions about land-based visitation that online expansion is actively testing. A First Nation that buys a property at a multiple set before provincial iGaming matured is taking a directional bet that physical casinos retain their customer base. Operating risk compounds it: gaming is a management-intensive business with regulatory, labour and compliance obligations that a passive revenue share never imposes. And concentration cuts both ways — a community whose own-source revenue depends heavily on one property has traded diversification for control.

The two models are converging, not competing

The most defensible reading of 2026 is that these approaches serve different purposes and increasingly coexist within the same communities. Revenue sharing functions as a floor: predictable, low-risk, broadly distributed, appropriate for communities without the scale or appetite to operate. Ownership functions as an upside instrument: higher variance, higher potential return, suited to nations with the governance capacity and capital access to absorb operating risk.

Nothing prevents a First Nation from receiving formula distributions while also owning a property, and several do. What matters is that the two are evaluated on their own terms rather than treated as a single question of "participation in gaming." The strategic question for any given nation is not which model is better in the abstract but which risks it is positioned to carry.

The structural difference from the United States remains instructive here. Canadian First Nations gaming operates under provincial Crown authority rather than a federal statute vesting tribes with proprietary rights to their own gaming operations, and that difference explains why ownership must be purchased in Canada while it is presumed under IGRA in the United States. Our comparison of the two legal models sets out how the frameworks diverge, and our survey of provincial revenue-sharing frameworks details how each province structures its arrangement. Understanding both is necessary before drawing conclusions about which path serves a given community best.