“They stay in the local area and shop in the local area.” Many bingo players include a stop at Hollywood Casino on their itinerary, he said. “They stay in local hotels we take 400-500 rooms in the Bangor area every bingo weekend,” Francis said. “That’s about 70 percent of our business, people coming by bus,” he said. Ron DeSantis reached an agreement with the state’s Seminole Tribe on Friday that would greatly expand gambling in the state, adding. The high stakes games can only be run on 27 weekends per year and the Indian tribe must pay an annual fee of 50,000 to the state to be allowed to run. High stakes bingo in Maine can only be played on federally recognized Indian tribes land. Penobscot High Stakes Bingo has arrangements with several tour operators to bring players by bus to the Bangor region on the high-stakes weekends. Bingo is legal in Maine as long as it is not run for profit. “We play for more than $250,000 in prizes over the weekend,” Francis said. Such weekends take place about every six weeks and draw players from as far away as the Canadian Maritimes and New Jersey and New York. The jackpot was paid out during a high-stakes bingo weekend that attracted “about 1,100 to 1,200 people every day” to the Socklalexis Bingo Palace, he said.

“The biggest we’ve had previously was $25,000, which was 15 or so years ago.” “It’s a dollar a ticket.”įor her dollar, the bingo player won $27,500, Francis indicated.

The player, who asked not to be identified, “was playing an Over the Rainbow Progressive Pull Tab,” said Miles Francis Jr., assistant general manager at Penobscot High Stakes Bingo.

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