The group currently challenging sports betting in Florida filed a request Tuesday asking the state Supreme Court to “immediately suspend” sports betting, hours after the Seminole Tribe relaunched the mobile app to existing customers statewide.
Gambling law experts expected the motion, filed by West Flagler Associates and its partners just after 5 p.m. Tuesday, as the logical next step in one of its two ongoing lawsuits that seek to block the gaming deal between the state of Florida and the Seminole Tribe. The deal, called a compact, would give the tribe a monopoly on sports betting in the state and bring in billions of dollars in revenue.
On Tuesday morning, the tribe relaunched its mobile sports betting app, Hard Rock Bets, to existing customers only, a week after announcing the return of in-person sports betting. The move caught legal experts, gamblers, and West Flagler itself off-guard, according to the motion.
“This launch was not previously announced and came as a surprise,” West Flagler’s motion reads. “On November 1, 2023, the Tribe announced that commencing December 7, 2023, it was commencing the games authorized by the 2021 Compact at its tribal casinos … Nowhere did the Tribe mention off-reservation mobile betting.”
The lawyers contend that they had not wanted to ask the court for the suspension a week ago, before the app’s relaunch, “in order to avoid burdening this Court with a request for expedited consideration in the absence of concrete proof that the Tribe was actually about to implement mobile sports betting statewide.”
Now that the app has launched, in order to maintain “status quo,” motion asks the court to suspend “the sports betting provisions” of the gaming compact.
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