The Florida Gaming Control Commission has sent cease-and-desist letters to 3 fantasy sports operators that grant players to wager against the house. Traditional DFS (daily fantasise sports) games are played among pools of players or peer-to-peer.
Known as “pick’em” fantasy sports, players on such apps wager whether a roster of players they put together will go o'er or below a repoint tote up calculated past the operator. In Florida, trio companies experience running play such games — PrizePicks, Betr, and Underdog Fantasy.
State gaming regulators on Jan. 31 told the triple that they must terminate such games and in the Sunshine State within 30 days. That agency pick’em games must cease past Mar 1 (2024 is a Leap Year, signification Feb has 29 days).
If this cessation is completed within that timeframe, the Commission testament take for the companion and all its officials, directors, and employees to make complied with the demands of the cease-and-desist order, and the Commission testament not have further action, including referral to the Office of Statewide Prosecution or to any State Attorney,” the letters read.
The commonwealth gaming regulatory said naught inwards the cease-and-desist letters prohibits the companies from operating contests that are “in compliance with the law.” All troika are expected to follow with the order.
Florida Gaming Environment
The Seminole Tribe holds a monopoly on to the highest degree house-banked table games in the tell and Las Vegas-style one-armed bandit machines outdoors of Miami-Dade and Broward counties. The tribe amended its Class III gaming heavyset in 2021 with Gov. Daffo DeSantis (R) to expand its gaming privileges to include non only craps and line roulette but also both retail and online sports betting.
The online sports betting component caused a legal dispute on allegations that the thick breaches the Native American Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA). The federal natural law requires that tribal gaming only run on supreme lands.
The Seminoles and DeSantis disagreed on claims that the “hub-and-spoke” approaching where bets are placed remotely via the net but only facilitated through sportsbook data processor servers on Seminole ground satisfies the federal Amerindic gaming statute. The vitrine is existence appealed to the US Supreme Court.
Hard Rock Bet, the tribe’s sportsbook brand, returned online inward December. Officials at Hard John Rock International, which is owned past the Seminoles, say the pick’em phantasy sports games go against their compact car because players are betting money against the house.
Jim Allen, Hard John Rock chairman and CEO, said inward Jan that the folk doesn’t make an egress with traditional DFS games like the ones DraftKings and FanDuel run inward Florida.
“What [PrizePicks, Betr, Underdog] are doing is gambling,” Woody Allen told WFTV9. “They’re taking unrecorded bets. It’s illegal and unequivocally violates the [Seminole] compact.”
Seminole Influence
The Seminoles’ situation on the pick’em games and the gaming charge taking swift sue is in time another notification signal of the tribe’s force inward Florida.
State gaming regulators, however, said their counsel advised that phantasy sports operators put up only if come byplay in the res publica if they simply put up a wrinkle and bill an accounting entry fee to participate. The Gaming Control Commission says Betr, PrizePicks, and Underdog do the opposite in participating inward the contest and winning the value if the contestant does not right hypothesis the outcome.
That’s why, the nation says, DraftKings and FanDuel did not obtain such cease-and-desist orders.
Florida’s fantasise sports regulations are nebulous at best. On the Florida Gaming Control Commission website’s FAQ page, single head asks if fantasize sports are allowed.
“Probably not,” the FAQ respond reads. “Unless you are placing a wager through and through sportsbooks operated past or in connective with the Seminole Tribe of Florida, you are most likely placing an illegal wager.”
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