Seminoles Strike Back Against Ballot Threats from LVS, DraftKings

All-powerful FL tribal gaming operator the Seminoles are plowing millions of dollars into a unexampled political citizens committee called “Standing Up for Florida,” Florida Politics reports.

The tribe is hoping to counteract efforts by out-of-state gaming companies that need to take exception its play monopolies via voter-led petitions.

“Standing Up for Florida” has kicked off its drive with a TV and digital media advertising titled “Watch Out, Florida.” The ad’s tagline is a poop warning to voters: “Don’t Sign Petitions.”

Out-of-state gaming companies are spending tens of millions to bout our body politic into another Las Vegas. They require to commute our establishment to earmark out-of-control gaming with no more guarantees for us and vainglorious profits for them,” the TV maculation claims.

The Seminoles contain a virtual monopoly on gambling casino gaming inwards Sunshine State (bar a fistful of slots licensees in Broward and Miami-Dade counties) at their sevener Hard Rock-branded casinos, and they need it to detain that way. They also at present hold a monopoly on sports betting, thanks to a young thick understanding negotiated with Gov. Daffo DeSantis.

Voters in Charge?

While the tribe does non figure these grievous out-of-staters, its targets are clear. LVS Corp and its powerful lobbyists hold been sniffing around Florida for years inwards the desire that someone power net ball them establish a cassino resort.

Now the Las Vegas-based company has teamed upwards with Alabama’s Poarch Band of Creek Indians on a ballot initiative called “Florida Voters inwards Charge.”

The initiative asks voters to exchange the tell make-up to grant pari-mutuel identity card rooms inwards Second Earl of Guilford FL to suit full-fledged casinos, provided they are 130 miles out from the Seminole reservation.

Theoretically, this could permit LVS or the Poarch Creek to purchase a identity card way that could and so be transformed into a gambling casino holiday resort in or around the Jacksonville area.

Meanwhile, DraftKings and FanDuel require voters to plunk for a more inclusive wandering sports betting market, specifically I that includes them.

This is via their committee, “Florida Education Champions,” which promises that disrupting the Seminole monopoly will work to a greater extent revenue to schools.

As the Seminoles promissory note in their campaign, they pay off $500 million to the say for each one year. And they would make a slip to renegotiate inwards this enter downwards if “Florida Education Champions'” vision ever became a reality.

The ii initiatives want 891,589 signatures from registered nation voters to be placed on the ballot inwards 2022.

Could Amendment 3 Backfire?

Ironically, the federation of tribes championed a ballot initiative of their own endorse inward 2018. At elections that year, FL residents passed Amendment 3, which constituted that all casino gaming enlargement must be approved past voters inwards a public ballot.

The effort was bankrolled past the Seminoles with the aid of Disney. And despite the tribe’s current advice not to sign on petitions inwards general, it got the necessary signatures, and ultimately the votes, to suit law.

The federation of tribes believed this would help safeguard their monopoly, because it would foreclose the law-makers from plausive laws that benefited commercial-grade gaming interests.

But it also gave a bundle of “interfering out-of-staters” an outdoors chance of gaining the form of run aground inwards FL that the general assembly has resisted for years.