Florida Legal Battle Over Hard Rock's Sports Betting App Launch
Transcript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - The story that keeps on giving here
00:04 in the state of Florida.
00:06 Now, I thought that given the fact
00:09 that they turned down the sports betting stay
00:13 is what they called it in the state of Florida,
00:15 meaning that Hard Rock had to make a decision
00:18 whether or not to jump and relaunch the app or not.
00:21 I thought that this basically was gonna be another week
00:24 because West Flagler had time to respond.
00:26 But instead, this is the first time Matt,
00:28 they're like, forget that, let's do it right away.
00:31 And they are headed after the governor of Florida,
00:34 Ron DeSantis, they're headed to the Supreme Court,
00:37 basically saying that DeSantis has no right
00:40 to just allow the Seminole tribe
00:42 to have sports betting in the state of Florida.
00:44 And now that it has gone to the Supreme Court,
00:47 I don't know how Floridians who wanna bet on sports
00:50 can be optimistic at least for the time being
00:53 that the Hard Rock app is gonna relaunch soon.
00:57 - Look, it's been murky this whole time
01:00 and it just got way more murky.
01:03 I mean, it's just, it's a bit of a mess here.
01:07 Let's go through chronologically what happened yesterday,
01:09 Craig, to give everybody a better idea.
01:12 Basically yesterday, the US Department of the Interior,
01:15 the feds, they came back and obviously they said
01:19 in opposition that they don't think there should be a stay
01:22 on the case that they should be allowed
01:24 to launch sports betting if they want to.
01:26 And so that is in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals,
01:30 that's where they're working through right now.
01:32 And technically, Wes Flagler has time to respond to that.
01:36 Really, the DC Circuit could come out and say,
01:38 now, okay, we're not gonna grant the stay.
01:41 So what's going on there?
01:44 Basically now, we're waiting to hear
01:46 if they're gonna give that stay.
01:48 Most likely, they are not going to grant that stay,
01:50 which should allow Hard Rock to go live.
01:54 But then last night, we get the new filing
01:58 that says that Wes Flagler is suing
02:02 and going into Florida Supreme Court.
02:04 And basically, just like you said,
02:06 because this is what they heard
02:07 from the DC Circuit Court, Craig,
02:09 they basically said, look, this compact,
02:14 it's really not changing Florida law.
02:16 And if you think that this has something to do
02:18 with Florida law, guess where you have to go
02:20 to litigate that.
02:21 So now they are in Florida.
02:24 And this was one of those things
02:26 that we thought could happen.
02:29 We thought that this may happen
02:31 after the US Supreme Court,
02:33 and if they decided not to hear the case.
02:36 But so this is a little sooner in the timeline
02:39 than I think anybody expected this to be filed.
02:42 And certainly, Craig, it does not look good
02:45 for your props and parlays,
02:47 at least for the 2023 NFL betting season.
02:51 I think we're gonna be waiting
02:52 a little bit longer here now.
02:54 And it's a shame because if that filing
02:57 did not come last night,
02:59 we really probably were looking at days
03:01 before Hard Rock got back up and running,
03:04 unless, as we've talked before,
03:06 maybe they were going to wait anyway,
03:09 because they don't want this,
03:11 the PR of having to pull their sportsbook down again.
03:17 So while we can't say for sure
03:18 that Hard Rock looked like it was gonna be launching,
03:21 all signs reporting toward yes,
03:23 and now not so much.
03:26 (upbeat music)
03:29 you