July 5, 2023
There has been a major break in the Florida sports betting case, where the Seminole Tribe has been fighting in a federal appellate court for quite a while now. The battle is over the Tribe’s ability to offer gambling on sporting events across the state, not just on their lands.
Now, the court has ordered the Department of Interior to reinstate their agreed compact with the state, giving their Seminole Hard Rock brand a monopoly on Florida sports betting. The ruling has opened the door for the tribe to reintroduce its Hard Rock Sportsbook betting app and pursue building two new casinos in South Florida.
The three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit determined that the federal gaming law permits the state to form a 30-year partnership with the Seminole Tribe for operating sports bets in the state. As part of the agreement, the tribe will also be able to include roulette and craps in its casino offerings, and will pay the state a minimum of $2.5 billion over the initial five years of the agreement.
This ruling 2021 reverses the 2021 decision of a U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, which ruled the Florida sports betting agreement was invalid based on where a bet took place. That court believed a person had to be present on Tribal land on order for the bet to take place on Tribal land. However, this new decision sets a precedent that an online bet takes place where the servers are physically located. In this case, those servers are on Tribal land.
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