Yesterday, the Seminole Tribe of Florida and two South Florida gambling entities settled a lawsuit that began in 2021.
As a result, the Hard Rock Sportsbook has agreed to offer betting odds for Jai Alai. Battle Court Jai Alai, LLC, is an affiliate of West Flagler Associates, one of the plaintiffs suing the Seminole Tribe, and houses a Jai Alai facility in the Miami region.
West Flagler Associates and Bonita-Fort Myers Corp. were left out of the sports betting equation when Governor DeSantis and the Seminoles agreed to a revised gaming compact in 2021.
“Rather than engaging in years of additional litigation, this agreement will allow the parties to work together to promote jai alai, which has played an important role in Florida’s gaming landscape for nearly 100 years,”
Jim Allen – CEO of Seminole Gaming
The revision allowed for the Seminoles’ Hard Rock Casino locations to offer in-person sports betting and, perhaps more importantly, mobile sportsbook apps across the entire state.
Generally speaking, sports betting is not a big profit earner for domestic casinos. In fact, if everything is working as planned, the books would break even, paying out as much as they take in.
However, the enormous popularity of sports betting is a loss-leader in that it attracts additional business to the more profitable casino games.
The only way to achieve significant revenue via sports betting is volume. In-person sportsbooks are limited to the regional population. Mobile sports betting sheds those geographical restrictions and allows wagering anywhere inside that given state.
Initially, it seemed that West Flagler Associates and Bonita-Fort Myers Corp. were merely intent on squashing the Seminole Tribe’s ability to offer online sports betting. The plaintiffs cited the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act’s language to insist that any tribal gambling must occur on-site.
The point of contention was the hub-and-spoke model that the Hard Rock Sportsbook app operated under. The Tribe adopted the position that any mobile or online wagers were technically being placed where the servers were located.
The Supreme Court of the United States refused to take up the appeal, thus confirming the lower court’s decision that backed the Seminoles hub-and-spoke approach.
While this gave the tribe the required approval to reopen their Florida sportsbooks, the SCOTUS may have inadvertantly given more legitimacy to offshore sports betting sites.
For example, if an offshore sportsbook houses its servers in Costa Rica, and an online wager is placed in Alabama, did the transaction occur in CR? Apparently the answer is yes, as international gambling sites continue to thrive stateside.
