The Seminole Tribe of Florida will begin sports betting, craps and roulette at all six of its casinos in December, the Tribe announced Wednesday, and South Florida's gamblers will get to experience it first.
The Seminole Tribe of Florida will begin in-person sports betting, craps and roulette at all six of its casinos in December, the tribe announced in a news release Wednesday, and South Florida’s gamblers will get to experience it first.
The announcement comes a week after the U.S Supreme Court lifted a stay to allow sports betting in the state to move forward, a milestone in a series of legal challenges to a gaming compact between the tribe and the state of Florida that gave it a monopoly on sports betting.
“The Seminole Tribe thanks the State of Florida, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of Justice for defending our Compact. By working together, the Tribe, the State and the federal government achieved a historic legal victory,” Marcellus Osceola Jr., Chairman of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, said in a statement.
Described as “A New Era in Florida Gaming,” celebrations of the launch of sports betting, craps and roulette will take place throughout the month of December, the release said. The official launch date is Dec. 7 for South Florida’s locations: Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood, Seminole Classic Casino in Hollywood and Seminole Casino Coconut Creek.
The next day, the games will launch at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tampa, and on Dec. 11, they will launch at Seminole Casino Immokalee and Seminole Brighton Casino on the northwest side of Lake Okeechobee.
“The Seminole Tribe of Florida’s new initiative will create jobs, increase tourism, and provide billions in added revenue for our state,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said in the release. “I was proud to work with the Tribe on our historic Gaming Compact and I look forward to its full implementation.”
The tribe had no update Wednesday on its plans to offer online sports betting, said Gary Bitner, a Seminole Tribe spokesman. In 2021, the Seminoles briefly launched a sports betting app but stopped accepting wagers after a court ruling blocked the deal.
The Seminoles are currently facing two legal challenges brought by Florida pari-mutuel companies against the gaming compact and sports betting in the state. The one before the U.S Supreme Court focuses specifically on the issue of online sports betting.
In the U.S Supreme Court case, filed in 2021, the companies argue that the gambling compact violates federal law by allowing gamblers to place mobile sports bets anywhere in the state, not only on tribal lands.
The agreement between Florida and the Seminole Tribe hinges on the idea that, as long as the servers accepting the bets are located on tribal lands, the betting is still technically occurring there and allowed under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
A second case now before the Florida Supreme Court argues that the compact violates a 2018 state amendment that requires voters to approve any further expansion of gambling in a statewide referendum.
That case could take up to three years to be finalized, according to Bob Jarvis, a law professor and gambling expert at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale.
But he told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in September that the challenge was also unlikely to succeed, as it has an exception for Indian gambling and was written and funded by the Seminoles.
Information from the Orlando Sentinel was used in this report.
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