• The legislative session in the Sunshine State has ended without the legalization of Florida sports betting.
• A special meeting between the Seminole Tribe and Senate President Bill Galvano later this year could bring legal sports betting to the state by way of new gaming-compacts.

Dec 30, 2020 Sports betting legalization could be on the horizon for Florida in 2021. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Peterburg filed three bills for legalizing sports wagering in the state. Proposal for Legalizing Sports Betting in Florida Awaits Legislative Session in March 2021. Florida law actually makes it illegal for residents to partake in unregulated gambling, such as offshore sports betting. Most state laws put the onus on operators who accept bets, but Florida also outlaws playing poker at an unregulated facility or over an unregulated device.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Another legislative session came to an end on March 13 marking another year where Florida sports betting legalization failed to pass.

Plenty of discussions took place this year among various lawmakers regarding the topic of making the gambling on sporting events legal but that’s about as far as it went; talk.

The Sunshine State is in a unique position where they’d need to receive the approval of the Seminole Tribe of Florida to move forward with legal gaming but both sides couldn’t come up with an agreement in time.

FL Sports Betting Timeline

In the beginning, the Tribe was not speaking with the state about possible legalization. Every effort made by either side to have a real talk on the issue did not occur.

It wasn’t until the very beginning of March that the two agreed to meet and go over making Florida sports betting legal. However, that was not nearly enough time for a bill to go through the proper channels on its way to becoming a law.

Presently, the Seminole Tribe has stopped payments to the state from their gaming businesses due to issues with their compacts.

That’s been a loss of $330 million in yearly payments as the Tribe continues to operate under their old compact because they have not yet been open to the terms stated within a new one. If they were to receive a deal like that of their old compact, they would be open to the idea of expanding into sports betting statewide.

A special legislative session would need to be held where Governor Ron DeSantis would involve himself in the gaming compact dilemma. As it stands, Florida is losing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue based on a proposal from Sen. Wilton Simpson that DeSantis did not agree with in the first place. He sided with the Tribes on that one.

“Obviously, the tribe makes a killing here at casinos in the state of Florida because they actually are the Florida businesses,” saidDeSantis after meeting with pari-mutuel operators last year.

He would like to see sports betting become a legal operation in the state if the right negotiations were to take place with the Tribe.

In Simpson’s proposal that was shot down, the Seminole Tribe would pay $500 million to the state on a yearly basis which is $170 million more than what they were paying and certain player games at their pari-mutuel betting establishments would no longer be allowed.

The Tribe refused this new compact because they’d be losing business and having to pay more. Legal sports betting could bring in an estimated $155.7 million to Florida which would be huge in closing that gap that Simpson’s compact wanted the Tribe to pay.

All hope may not be lost for legal sports betting in the Sunshine State. While it is highly unusual for a special session to take place during an election year and with the current state of the Coronavirus pandemic, a new gaming compact for the Tribe may still be in the cards.

However, if it is, they could discuss and allow their facilities to include legal sports betting within a new compact. If that were to happen, Florida could actually see the legalization of gambling on sports matchups in 2020.

“We have made progress internally, and we are now engaged in negotiations with the Tribe,” saidSenate President Bill Galvano. And so that special legislation might take place after all as DeSantis added “I hope we get to a deal there. But again, I’d rather have a good deal and do it a few days later, or even you can even bring people back potentially, than try to force things under an artificial timeline.”

News tags: Bill Galvano | Florida | Ron DeSantis | Seminole Tribe of Florida | sports betting | Wilton Simpson

Christina has been writing for as long as she can remember and does dedicated research on the newly regulated sports betting market. She comes from a family of sports lovers that engage in friendly bets from time to time. During the winter months, you can find Christina baking cookies and beating the entire staff at Mario Kart…the N64 version of course.

TAMPA, Fla. — Super Bowl LV is right around the corner, and sports fans across the region who like to put a wager on the game are watching the playoffs closely to see how the final face-off will shape up.

Betting on the Super Bowl is big business. Last year, the American Gaming Association estimated that Americans wagered some $7 billion on last year’s game in Miami, and the numbers keep climbing.

What You Need To Know

• Betting on the Super Bowl is a multibillion-dollar business


• Some bets, called 'prop bets,' have nothing to do with who wins the game


• Sports betting is illegal in the state of Florida

There’s much more to bet on than who wins or what the spread might be. Some of the most interesting betting options have nothing at all to do with which team might emerge victorious. They’re called proposition bets, or “prop bets,” and they can be as straightforward as who ends up the game’s MVP or as obscure as the color of the sports drink the winning team might dump on their coach.

The result of the coin toss at the beginning of the game is also a popular prop bet, as is the length of time it takes for the year’s special guest to get all the way through singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Sports betting sites like BookMaker and BetNow often cater to fans’ sense of the weird with their own list of available prop bets; here are some of last year’s, which saw the Kansas City Chiefs beating the San Francisco 49ers:

• Will any player be arrested in Miami after the game?
• Will Ricky Martin make an appearance on stage?
• Will any player other than the quarterback take a direct snap?
• Will a fan run onto the field during the game?
• Will Floyd Mayweather wager over/under $1 million on the game?

Fans often vote on those famous Super Bowl commercials as well, trying to win some cash by guessing which beer company’s ad will air first or whether or not a specific B-list celebrity will utter their now ages-old catchphrase while hawking a particular product.

Before you get all excited about plunking down some cash on a weird Super Bowl outcome, however, remember that betting on sports is illegal in the state of Florida. While there is some argument over whether heading to an offshore betting website actually skirts the law or defies it outright, Florida Statute 849.14 makes a pretty strong case that no wagering on sports—with certain exemptions for pari-mutuel betting on things like horse racing, jai alai and, up until the beginning of this year, greyhound racing—is allowed in the Sunshine State:

“Whoever stakes, bets or wagers any money or other thing of value upon the result of any trial or contest of skill, speed or power or endurance of human or beast, or whoever receives in any manner whatsoever any money or other thing of value staked, bet or wagered, or offered for the purpose of being staked, bet or wagered, by or for any other person upon any such result, or whoever knowingly becomes the custodian or depositary of any money or other thing of value so staked, bet, or wagered upon any such result, or whoever aids, or assists, or abets in any manner in any of such acts all of which are hereby forbidden, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.”

Florida Sports Betting Legislation

That said, we know Super Bowl betting is big business. So if you’ve just gotta get some skin in the game, you might be better off making a friendly wager with a friend—or calling one in one of the many states (or DC!) where sports betting is already legal.