Florida Sports Betting On The Ropes After Court Ruling
Update: The Seminole Tribe has shut down its Hard Rock sports betting app while it appeals the court ruling.
The compact between Florida and the Seminole Tribe was overturned by US District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich, who opined that the agreement violated IGRA. The ruling will undoubtedly be appealed, but it looks to spell the end of online sports betting in Florida for the time being.
The compact was signed in June and approved by the Department of Interior, with the DOI deciding to neither endorse nor deny the compact. The DOI decision led to several legal challenges.
Despite the challenges and a court date of November 5, the Seminole Tribe launched mobile sports betting on November 1, a bold move that raised some eyebrows for its timing.
According to Ryan Butler, the Seminole’s Florida sports betting app no longer accepts deposits but allows existing customers to withdraw funds.
The Writing on the Wall
One of the people who questioned the compact from the outset was gaming lawyer Daniel Wallach, who was adamant the compact wouldn’t withstand legal challenges.
In a roundtable discussion published in Gaming Law Review [paywall] in August (the interview was conducted in June), Wallach laid out the legal issues:
“But the big question of the day is whether this will all hold up legally because while this is a great accomplishment for Governor DeSantis, it also is fraught with tremendous legal risks. Florida presents two levels of legal obstacles that simply do not exist in other states.
“[…]
“The bigger risk is under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act because so much of this compact’s approach to sports betting is external to Indian lands. And we’ll talk about the role that the server plays and whether routing or processing bets through a server inoculates everything else that takes place outside of Indian lands.”
IGRA and Online Gambling
The case is devastating for Florida sports betting, but it has even more significant ramifications for tribal gaming. One of the outstanding questions in the era of online gambling is, “where does a bet take place?” Does it take place where it’s placed, where it’s accepted, or both?
That is an issue that remains unresolved, which is how most would like to leave it. As I wrote in June:
“What’s interesting about this topic is that regardless of how this plays out with regard to Florida, a proverbial can of worms will be unleashed.
“If a bet is determined to occur at the server (or where it is accepted), what does that mean for offshore gambling sites operating in jurisdictions where said activity is legal? What does it mean for the current ring-fenced models that keep out-of-state bettors from accessing sites? And what does it mean for tribal gaming operators across the country, as it would seemingly give them free rein to operate online gambling sites and accept customers from all over the globe?”
And as Wallach stated in the GLR roundtable discussion:
“It sets up what likely is the number one test case in the country for the jurisdictional limits of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and whether you can include within Class III compacts gaming activities that undoubtedly are initiated off Indian lands. It really does tee this up for what could be two or three levels of court battles in both the Florida state court system and the federal courts with the possibility that this could go all the way to the US Supreme Court, because this could potentially pose—depending on how it shakes out—a possible split among the federal circuit courts of appeal as to how mobile wagering squares with IGRA’s requirement that the gaming activity take place solely on Indian lands.”
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.
