Seminole Tribe relaunches mobile sports betting in Florida amid legal challenges

Shira Moolten, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Updated ·6 min read

The Seminole Tribe relaunched its mobile sports betting app Tuesday in a “limited” fashion, spokespeople confirmed, despite two ongoing lawsuits that challenge the practice and the gaming compact between the tribe and the state.

The launch comes as a surprise move in the course of the tribe’s legal battles and to Florida’s gamblers and gambling law experts, only a week after the tribe publicly announced the return of in-person sports betting but said nothing about betting online.

“I’m stunned,” Bob Jarvis, a gambling expert and law professor at Nova Southeastern University, told the Sun Sentinel Tuesday morning following news of the app’s launch. “Especially with last week’s announcement that was so careful to only focus on what the compact allowed that was not the subject of the lawsuit. I thought they really, for the moment, were prepared to continue not to try to offer mobile sports betting.”

The launch was not publicly announced, but was confirmed in a statement from Gary Bitner, a spokesperson for the tribe.

“The Seminole Tribe is offering limited access to existing Florida customers to test its Hard Rock Bet platform,” Bitner’s statement said, referring to customers who used the app briefly in 2021 before it stopped accepting wagers after a court ruling blocked the gaming compact between the state of Florida and the Seminole Tribe.

The compact legalized mobile and in-person sports betting under the control of the tribe, giving it a full monopoly over the practice in Florida.

On Tuesday morning, the Hard Rock Bet account posted a video on X of The Undertaker emerging from a box, flames erupting around him, while an announcer exclaims, “Oh my God! The dead has risen,” perhaps in a nod to the resurgence of the sports betting app.

Bitner’s statement did not elaborate on how many customers currently have access, and he declined to comment on when the app will fully launch to all customers.

That launch appears imminent, however, according to the app’s website, where “Legal sports betting is coming to Florida” is emblazoned in all caps across the screen.

Floridians who already had sports betting accounts from the brief 2021 launch, or who had already joined the company’s loyalty program, Unity by Hard Rock, before Nov. 6, get full “early access” and can place bets before the “official launch,” the website says: “All you have to do is download or open the all-new Hard Rock Bet app and log back into your account with the same credentials.”

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But the app will work only for those in Florida. Users who tried to place bets from other states said that their attempts were blocked Tuesday.

Meanwhile, those who join the loyalty program after Nov. 6 can get on the “early access waitlist,” the website says, by going to their local Seminole casino and earning a “Unity point” by playing a casino game.

Last week, the tribe announced that in-person sports betting would return on Dec. 7 at all South Florida locations, and, at the time, did not comment on the return of mobile sports betting.

“If they were going to do this, why didn’t they announce it last week as a total package?” Jarvis asked. “I don’t know if their thinking changed in the last week or if this was always their plan … if you’re going to do it already, you’d want to make a really big splash with the cameras rolling.”

But it’s also possible that the tribe wanted to keep the news hidden from its legal challengers.

Currently, two lawsuits filed by West Flagler and Associates on behalf of a group of pari-mutuel companies seek to block the gaming compact and mobile sports betting specifically. Those lawsuits could force the Seminoles to pause the app yet again.

One is before the U.S. Supreme Court, and argues that mobile sports betting defies the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act because it won’t necessarily occur on tribal land. The gaming compact states that the bets would comply with IGRA because the servers accepting the bets are located on Seminole Tribe land.

The other is before the Florida Supreme Court, and argues that the law defies an amendment which requires 60% of voters to approve any expansion of gambling in the state.

Two weeks ago, the U.S Supreme Court denied a stay that had temporarily blocked the compact, and with it, sports betting in the state. The tribe’s in-person sports betting announcement soon followed.

But the Florida Supreme Court could institute another stay that forces the tribe to halt the app yet again, like in 2021. West Flagler had already implied that it would request that stay.

“I suspect that the reason why the Seminole Tribe kept this under wraps was to prevent West Flagler from getting out ahead of it and filing an emergency motion at the Florida Supreme Court,” said Daniel Wallach, a sports gambling attorney based in Hallandale Beach. ” … It’s a different kind of optic if the filing occurs after the launch rather than before the launch.”

Wallach was also surprised by Tuesday’s news, however.

“I thought the Seminole Tribe would wait until the conclusion of all court proceedings and have 100 percent certainty and legal clarity before launching,” he said.

The Seminoles are poised to win both cases, Jarvis said. Still, he had expected the tribe to wait before relaunching mobile sports betting, not only because the app may have to pause again, but because the launch could also be perceived as a “slap in the face to the judges and justices who have not yet ruled on these matters.”

Yet as Wallach pointed out last week, each month that mobile sports betting is not offered, the tribe misses out on potentially hundreds of millions of dollars.

“The Seminoles presumably took [these things] into account and decided ‘we’re willing to take the business and legal risks,'” Javis added. “And maybe it is that they just felt, ‘we want to make money.'”

The question over whether another stay will halt sports betting will likely have an answer soon. If West Flagler does in fact decide to file the application for an emergency stay, it will have to do so in a “tight time frame,” Wallach said, probably within the next two to three weeks. If the companies wait too long, the court could view it as a waiver of their rights to temporary relief.

“We may be on the verge of another court ruling,” he added, “that could decide, at least short-term, the future of online sports betting.”