Craps, roulette and sports betting coming to Seminole casinos following years of litigation
The Seminole Tribe will begin offering Craps, Roulette and sports betting at its six casinos in Florida starting next month.
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The announcement comes after a series of favorable rulings for the Tribe in a multi-year legal battle over the legality of the state’s new gaming compact.
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The games will launch at the Tribe’s three South Florida casinos on December 7th, at the Tampa HardRock Hotel & Casino on December 8th and at Seminole Casino Immokalee and Seminole Brighton Casino on December 11th.
The games were included in Florida’s Seminole Gaming Compact approved in 2021, which guaranteed the state $20 billion over the course of the 30-year deal.
Annual state revenues from the compact were expected to total around $500 million and State Representative Randy Fine (R-Palm Bay), who carried the compact through the legislature, told Action News Jax those payments to begin as soon as the games officially launch next month.
Related Story: Florida sports betting fight heading to U.S. Supreme Court
“We’re running big budget surpluses. So, this means we’ll even run a bigger budget surplus, which isn’t a bad thing to do, or we’ll be able to cut taxes in ways we didn’t expect, or we’ll be able to spend money on things we weren’t planning to, but all three of these are positive. There’s no downside to this,” Fine said.
Gaming attorney Daniel Wallach said he isn’t surprised by the Tribe’s announcement, as the court battle that threw the compact in legal limbo for the past two years was never about on-reservation gaming in the first place.
“The focus is only on the internet,” Wallach said.
Online sports betting through the Hard Rock SportsBook app wasn’t mentioned in the Tribe’s latest announcement.
But Wallach is betting the relaunch could be just around the corner, despite the fact cases in both federal and state court challenging the Tribe’s ability to offer sports betting online are still ongoing.
“There is somewhat of a chance that either the US Supreme Court or the Florida Supreme Court will decide that these wagers placed by patrons from their mobile phones, is not the equivalent of gaming on Indian lands,” Wallach said.
Related Story: Speculation over return of legal sports betting in Florida grows after second court ruling
Legally speaking, he noted, the Tribe is free to relaunch its app at any time, and the money potentially being left on the table by not doing so is staggering.
“So, they’re weighing the limited downside risk of ultimately losing before either of the supreme courts, versus the lost economic opportunity of $100 to $200 million a month. That’s a lot of money to leave on the table, and even if they get it wrong, even if they launch and have to terminate their operations at some later point, they won’t suffer any penalty,” Wallach said.
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If the Tribe does decide hedge its bets and waits until the conclusion of the lawsuits to relaunch online sports betting, Floridians will likely be stuck holding their bets until sometime mid next year, assuming the courts rule in the Tribe’s favor, of course.
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