Last-Ditch Effort To Get Sports Betting On The Ballot In Florida
With a February 1 deadline looming, an effort to get sports betting added to the November ballot in Florida is coming down to the wire. Two sports betting giants, DraftKings and FanDuel, are behind the initiative to break the Seminoles grip on gambling in Florida, but that grip is proving vise-like.
The Seminoles have vehemently opposed the effort, including opposition ads, and as reported by Politico, have gone so far as to hire people to interfere with signature gatherers.
Supporters need to collect 891,589 verified signatures to get the measure on the 2022 ballot. The effort is now racing against the clock, as there are only two weeks left, and at last check, the initiative is still hundreds of thousands of names away from the signature threshold.
They’ve decided not to go quietly into the night. Instead, they’re doing their best impression of William Wallace (as played by Mel Gibson) to rally the troops and seize victory from the jaws of defeat.
DraftKings Offering $100 in Site Credits
In a late-stage attempt to gather signatures, DraftKings is offering up $1 million in the form of $100 site credits to customers.
Per DraftKings:
To celebrate, if the signature count is hit by 2/1, we will pay out up to $1M to ALL Florida DraftKings customers, EACH customer getting $100 in site credits.
Offer Details:
– User must be a Florida resident and physically located in Florida at the time of redemption
– User must have a DK eligible account by 1/19
– Credits will be in DK Dollars. DK Dollars have no cash value and must be played through on site
– To claim the $100 DK Dollars, the customer must click through either the redemption email sent by DraftKings or the redemption link on the homepage of their DraftKings app
– Will pay out a total maximum of $1M or 10,000 users until 2/11
– No political action is necessary to be eligible for the DK$
– Signature count must hit 891K using this source of truth by 2/1
Emergency Press Conference
Barstool wants the same thing as DraftKings, but it’s taking a different approach, using Dave Portnoy to mobilize Stoolies (Barstool fans) as he’s done so many times in the past (most recently the Barstool Fund).
Portnoy’s tweet garnered over 5,000 likes on Twitter and over 400,000 views on Instagram. If anyone could push the measure across the finish line, it would be Portnoy, as Stoolies are notorious for stepping up in these situations. Still, it’s going to take a Herculean effort to get the necessary number of signatures in the limited time available.
Florida Sports Betting So Far
Florida sports betting has been a bumpy ride. The fireworks began shortly after the compact agreement between the state and the Seminole Tribe was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and approved by the legislature.
First came the lawsuits, then the decision by the Seminoles to launch mobile betting before hearing from the court, and finally the court ruling that prohibited mobile betting, sending the Seminole’s recently launched mobile sports betting app offline.
The decision is under appeal but seems unlikely to go the Seminole’s way. For mobile betting in Florida, the DraftKings-FanDuel led initiative appears to be the state’s best hope for mobile betting in the near future.
Steve Ruddock is the content director for BettingUSA and the Editor-in-Chief of Gaming Law Review.
Steve has covered the legal and legislative developments in the US gambling sector for more than a decade for online and print publications.
