Caesars Entertainment announced Wednesday that it will expand its existing partnership with three Wabanaki Nations to include online casino gambling in Maine.

The Reno, Nevada-based casino entertainment company already operates sports betting in the state in partnership with the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Penobscot Nation and the Mi’kmaq Nation.

Gov. Janet Mills allowed a bill legalizing internet gambling as an exclusively tribal right to become law without her signature earlier this year. That law is set to take effect July 29, and rulemaking is already underway.

Online table games could become available sometime this year, or early in 2027.

Both the sports betting law, signed in 2022, and the iGaming law allow each of the Wabanaki Nations to secure a license for gambling operations that can be run by an outside business partner.

The fourth Wabanaki Nation, the Passamaquoddy Tribe, works with DraftKings in its sports betting venture. The tribe has yet to announce its partner in its iGaming enterprise.

Tribal leaders hail iGaming as a lifeline for economically suppressed Indigenous communities. Already, the millions in profits generated in the first two years of sports betting are trickling into reservation communities. The Mi’kmaq Nation announced in March that it would use sports betting revenue to disperse for the first time a per capita payment to tribal members.

“Internet gaming revenues will provide our tribal government with a more secure, long-term source of revenue that will help us provide essential services and make critical investments in community infrastructure,” Clarissa Sabattis, chief of the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, said in the release.

Revenue from iGaming will be taxed by the state at a rate of 18%.

The proposed rules mirror the state’s sports betting regulations and set a hard ceiling for the operator’s cut of gross revenues at 40%, leaving no less than 42% of revenue for the tribes.

The Legislature estimated iGaming operations could generate $20 million statewide in the 2026-27 fiscal year.

One of Maine’s brick-and-mortar gambling halls, Oxford Casino, is suing the state over the law. A rise in internet gambling could take a slice out of profits from in-person table games. The lawsuit has not halted the law from taking effect next month.

Reuben M. Schafir is a Report for America corps member who writes about Indigenous and rural communities for the Portland Press Herald.