Sports betting has spread to states large and small. Florida is not one of them, despite hosting the Super Bowl in Miami last weekend, and planning to host it next year in Tampa. While discussions are ongoing in Tallahassee, when and if remain in question thanks to unique factors, chief among them, the Seminole tribe and Amendment 3.
The Seminoles’ compact with the state lapsed when the government failed to crack down on designated card games at pari-mutuel venues throughout Florida. As a result, the tribe stopped paying the state $350 million a year.
Legislators are dickering with ways to negotiate a new compact, one with a sports betting component. Should that fail, Amendment 3 could stand in the way of approving sports betting. That amendment requires any expansion of gambling to seek voter approval. Expansion under the Seminole compact would be exempt from the amendment dictates.
“The legislature could choose to work with the tribe and put in place a new compact, that would not have to be approved by Amendment 3,” said Marc Dunbar, who teaches gambling law at Florida State’s Law School and represents the Seminole Tribe.
“Other than that,” he told 10 News in St. Petersburg, “Amendment 3 pretty much closed the door on the legislature’s ability to unilaterally expand gambling to try and get some of the new offerings, such as sports wagering.”
Still, Senator Jeff Brandes has filed legislation that would allow certain types of sports gambling under the auspices of the Florida Lottery, which may not call Amendment 3 into play.
Governor Ron DeSantis may be the biggest factor moving forward, Dunbar said. “In reality, Governor DeSantis has all the cards in this,” he said. “The statute is clear as it relates to a tribal compact, it must initiate with the governor. And, on the back side of it, any legislation has to be signed by the governor.”
Truth be told, sports gambling doesn’t offer a huge windfall for states like Florida. But it does provide indirect benefits. In Nevada, sport gambling is only about 2 percent of the overall gambling picture, said gaming experts and historian David Schwartz, of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.
“Obviously you’ve got a tax on that small percent,” Schwartz said. “The main idea, I think, isn’t so much using it to generate revenue, even though that’s a concern for a lot of lawmakers, It’s saying people and citizens want to do this, why not have them be able to do it legally which has a lot of public policy benefits where they’re not doing it with illegal bookmakers.”
According to the Tampa Bay Times, House and Senate leaders confirmed on January 27 they are engaged in an effort to reach a deal with the governor that would update Florida’s gambling laws by allowing organized sports betting and bring in new revenue from the Seminole Tribe.
Senator Travis Hutson and Senate President Bill Galvano have been working on a proposal with their counterparts in the House, Rep. Mike LaRosa and House Speaker José Oliva. “We’re going after the big items and, if we can agree to them, we’ll work on laying out the details and the policy,’’ LaRosa said.
Any deal with the tribe, which owns the Hard Rock casinos in Tampa and Hollywood, would require the state to give it exclusive access to something. Legislators see sports betting as that something, but want to keep pari-mutuels happy by allowing them to keep their controversial card games.
The proposal would also add online sports betting to the menu at dog tracks, horse tracks and jai-alai frontons around the state but only because those changes would be part of the tribe’s getting exclusive access to other games such as craps and roulette, and possibly operating the sports betting.
LaRosa said the Seminoles would operate as the hub for sports betting, by running sportsbooks at its own casinos while also getting a cut of the revenues from bets made at pari-mutuels around the state.
“If we can’t get there without the House and Senate in agreement on something to present the governor, we won’t present anything,” Hutson said.
Hutson said any proposal, would probably have to come before voters for statewide approval. But LaRosa said voter approval may not be necessary with a narrowly-crafted deal that puts expanded games in control of the Seminole Tribe, such as an arrangement that would allow sports bets to be placed at tracks and frontons using geo-fencing, in which the bets would go through servers run by the Tribe and “the transaction takes place on their property,’’ he said.
“Since designated-player games are already happening, I don’t feel we need to do anything one way or another as it relates to Amendment 3,’’ he said.
John Sowinski, director of No Casinos—which sponsored Amendment 3 and successfully won voter approval for it in 2018—said otherwise.
“Any judge would call BS on that,’’ he said.
