Florida retail, online sports betting agreement reached with Seminole Tribe but hurdles remain
Sports betting could be coming to Florida after an agreement was reached Friday.
The three most populous states in the USA are California, Texas and Florida. None of them have legalized sports betting, but that could change fairly soon in the Sunshine State as Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a gambling deal Friday with the Seminole Tribe of Florida that would allow both retail (in-person) and online gambling. House Speaker Chris Sprowls confirmed the deal from the House Floor.
Specific terms have not been released, but the Seminole Tribe would serve as a hub for sports betting and oversee it all with wagers being allowed at the Tribe's numerous existing casinos in Florida, professional sporting venues (like Miami's Hard Rock Stadium in picture; no state has approved in-stadium sportsbooks for college sports venues) and pari-mutuel facilities such as horse racing tracks, card rooms and jai alai arenas. The Seminoles also reportedly would get three new casinos on tribal lands and would be allowed to become full casinos by also adding craps and roulette.
"The Seminole Tribe of Florida is committed to a mutually beneficial gaming compact with the State of Florida and looks forward to its approval by the Florida Legislature, the Seminole Tribal Council and the U.S. Department of the Interior," Seminole Tribe of Florida Chairman Marcellus Osceola Jr. said in a statement to the Miami Herald on Thursday.
The deal heads to the Florida Legislature, which will take up the issue May 17 in a special session and must be approved by that group as well as the federal government. Legal challenges are almost a certainty because, well, it's Florida. There are also questions on whether the deal would violate the constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2018 that requires voter approval of all new games. If the deal is approved, the state could receive between $500 million to $1 billion of new annual revenue from the Seminole Tribe.
The past two Super Bowls were in Florida, and yet residents couldn't wager on them legally in state. Florida of course has three NFL teams (Bucs, Dolphins, Jaguars), two NBA (Magic, Heat), two MLB (Rays, Marlins) and two NHL teams (Lightning, Panthers). The state also hosts numerous PGA Tour and NASCAR events, Grapefruit League spring training, and soccer matches both international and domestic (Miami has an MLS club). More than 100 million tourists visit Florida annually.
In 2019, the Tribe stopped annual payments of about $350 million to the state under an earlier gambling agreement because of an issue over "designated player" games offered at many card rooms throughout Florida not run by the Tribe. The new agreement would allow those card rooms to continue offering their current slate of "designated player" games without running afoul of the gaming compact.
This deal would be a major political coup for the Republican DeSantis as he heads into a re-election campaign in 2022 and also reportedly has designs on running for president in 2024. With all the hoops to jump through, legalized betting in Florida surely won't happen before '22.
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