Chinook Winds’ sports wagering lounge in Oregon off to a good start

"Things have been really good," Matthew Pond, the Assistant Operations Manager at Chinook Winds, told KOIN 6 News. 

He said that since it officially opened over a month ago, they’ve received a good amount of praise for their Lounge from people all over the state and beyond.

According to the numbers he was willing to share, Chinook Winds is up in two important revenue categories since they opened the first sportsbook in Oregon at the end of August: Gambling revenue is up roughly 15% and the casino exceeded its own projections for the first full month of operations by 10%.

“It’s small but it’s exactly what we need,” Pond said. “We are getting a lot of people from Portland, Salem, even Seattle since we are the only place in the Pacific Northwest that offers this. But we also have people that come in daily that live around here.”

In the midst of football season, Pond said they see about 70 percent of bets going toward NFL or NCAA football games. And almost all bets are on individual games.

“It’s mostly betting on games,” Pond said. “We do get Super Bowl bets, World Series bets and things like that, but probably 90 percent of the wagering has been on games.”

The Sports Wagering Lounge added five new jobs to fill the needs of the area and training was a priority for Will Robertson, director of casino operations.

“The hardest part of getting this up and running has been educating ourselves and with any new gaming introduction we’re going to have those hurdles,” Robertson said back when the Lounge first opened. “But I can’t say enough about everyone who’s helped get us off the ground.”

Since then, Pond said they haven’t been planning any major additions involved with the Lounge, but rather excelling at the services they currently offer.

“We’ve mostly been focused on getting our staff trained as of right now and they’ve done a very good job at adjusting since most of the employees here were formally in the Keno lounge, which is somewhat similar,” Pond said.

The Sports Wagering Lounge is located on the second floor of the Casino, which is own and operated by the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Reservation, and is open daily.

According to Pond, unlike other tribal casinos in the state Chinook Winds has not renegotiated an agreement with the state since Sports Action shuttered. In effect, the Confederated Siletz tribes had been grandfathered in and were able to open up their sports book more quickly.

“We were allowed to (open) through our compact when a lot of the casinos weren’t,” Pond said. “It is an amenity we have that nobody else has right now.”

It took more than a year of work to build up the infrastructure needed to run the sportsbook at Chinook Winds. They chose a Las Vegas-based vendor to provide the systems, handle risk management and set the lines. After that, it came down to training employees.