State officials and the Seminole Tribe of Florida last week signed an agreement which ensures the state access to hundreds of million dollars in revenue-sharing from Seminole gaming. The agreement also ends lawsuits filed by each side over issues surrounding the expiration of the Compact in 2015.
A key provision of the settlement requires the state to take aggressive action against companies that allow banked or designated player games or electronic table games. Such games have gamblers play against someone other than each other, be it a dealer or a player designated as a dealer. The court has ruled such games violate the terms of the 2010 Compact, thus allowing the Tribe to stop making payments to the state.
Jim O’Brien, president and CEO of Melbourne Greyhound Park, says the agreement has no impact on the games it offers in its Club 52 poker room: two- and three-card poker and “Ultimate Texas Hold ’em.”
“Everything stays the same and we get rid of pending litigation as long as we obey the guidelines,” O’Brien said.
The agreement is the latest action taken to deal with a comprehensive gambling plan that was unable to get through the legislature in the past two sessions. Not long after the legislature ended its year in May, the Florida Supreme Court voted against a suit brought by a racetrack in Gretna, a small town in Gadsden County, near the Panhandle, to permit slot machines on the basis of a county referendum. If the decision had gone the track’s way, seven other pari-mutuel locations would have been permitted to install slots, including Melbourne Greyhound Park, a move which Brevard County voters narrowly supported in 2012.
The 2010 Compact with the state and the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation gave the Seminole Tribe authorization to conduct banked card games for five years. In October 2015, tribal leaders sued the state and the state counter-sued over the lack of renewal and the proliferation of banked games at tracks around the state. Both suits were consolidated.
The court entered a judgment declaring the Seminole Tribe has the right under the 2010 Compact to provide banked games for 20 years at its seven locations, or until 2030. At the same time, the court dismissed the state’s claim.
On Jan. 19 of this year, the state appealed to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The Tribe insisted it had the right to suspend payments or put its revenue share into an escrow account.
Last week’s settlement wiped out the suits by agreeing that it’s in the interest of both the state and the Seminole Tribe to wait until the end of the 2018 legislative session before suspending any payments or to use an escrow account.
