Seminole Tribe settles legal challenges to online sports gambling exclusivity in Florida

The Seminole Tribe of Florida and a group of businesses that operate racetracks and poker rooms have settled a yearslong legal dispute over whether the Seminole Tribe should have exclusive rights to online sports betting in Florida, the tribe announced Monday.

The Seminole Tribe, along with West Flagler Associates and the Bonita-Fort Myers Corp., have entered into a comprehensive agreement where the companies have agreed to end litigation against the tribe's gaming operations and instead will begin a new partnership to offer Jai Alai wagering on the tribe's Hard Rock Bet app.

“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,” Seminole Gaming CEO Jim Allen said in a statement.

The companies that had been suing the Seminole Tribe took a blow in June, when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up a challenge to an agreement that gave the Seminole Tribe exclusive rights to handle online sports betting in Florida. The nation's highest court denied a petition from opponents of the compact, which promises to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars for the tribe and the state. In March, the Florida Supreme Court had ruled that the companies had filed the wrong type of petition to challenge the 2021 compact between the Seminole Tribe of Florida and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration.

The companies had previously argued that the compact gives the tribe a sports betting monopoly in the nation's third-most populous state and that the U.S. Department of Interior wrongly approved the compact even though it violates the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which requires that gambling occur on tribal lands.

The companies questioned whether online sports bets that can be placed from anywhere in Florida could be considered to be on tribal land when only the computer servers that host the betting services are located there. They said DeSantis and the Legislature, which approved the compact, improperly exceeded their powers by authorizing sports betting off tribal lands.

The tribe launched its online sports betting operation late last year, and state economic forecasters predict that the revenue sharing from tribal gambling could total $4.4 billion through the end of this decade.