Legal Challenges Delay Hard Rock's FL Sports Betting Launch
Transcript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Of what is going on here in Florida.
00:05 I guess Pat, it should come as no surprise
00:08 that Florida is having all kinds of crazy issues
00:11 one way or the other, depending on where you stand.
00:14 Thanks again for coming on the show
00:15 and trying to make sense of it.
00:17 - Thanks as always for having me on Craig.
00:20 Yeah, Florida is an interesting case.
00:22 To be honest, I think the few bets you probably placed
00:26 in 2021 were the only bets you were gonna place
00:29 for a while down there in Florida.
00:31 So I'm sorry about that.
00:32 But yeah, Wes Flagler who opened the initial case
00:35 that is now still sitting in the US District Court
00:39 of Appeals that could be ruled on at any moment really
00:43 has opened a second case in the Supreme Court of Florida
00:48 challenging the constitutional validity
00:51 of the way the tribal sports deal went down for Hard Rock.
00:56 And yeah, this is just gonna push it back
00:59 a couple of months.
01:00 I think it's just Wes Flagler opening a second front
01:02 to make sure that Hard Rock doesn't get off the ground
01:06 again 'cause you recall it wasn't that long ago
01:09 where people were like, ah, I could launch again any day.
01:12 I think this for sure kind of postpones any sort of relaunch
01:15 until all of this clears up.
01:17 So another shutdown doesn't have to happen
01:19 after they go live.
01:21 But to your point before we went to break,
01:25 I don't know, you don't know, Hard Rock doesn't know.
01:29 Nobody knows essentially.
01:31 So yeah, best of luck to you, I guess,
01:34 in terms of when you're gonna place a real legal sports bet.
01:38 - I think it is when, not if, I think we know that.
01:42 But I think that from the Seminole tribes perspective,
01:46 there have been some that would suggest,
01:47 well, why not work with Wes Flagler
01:50 and figure out a way that everybody in Florida can bet,
01:53 but there's no interest in that whatsoever
01:55 for the Seminole tribe, right?
01:56 Like they may as well wait,
01:58 if they have to wait another six months to a year
02:00 to have a monopoly on this thing,
02:02 it's in their best interest to do so, isn't it?
02:05 - Yeah, it certainly seems like
02:07 they don't have any interest in doing it.
02:08 And we have heard talk of maybe bringing out
02:11 a spoken wheel sort of situation
02:13 where a bigger operator or a couple bigger operators
02:17 pay a big chunk of their revenue
02:20 to the Seminole tribe and Hard Rock
02:22 so to kind of make their worth it to not have the monopoly.
02:27 But at this point, it seems like they're just ready
02:29 to kind of dig in their heels and wait for it.
02:31 And I think what's interesting here is, again,
02:34 Wes Flagler opening a second front,
02:36 maybe they'll find a way to open a third one
02:38 to kind of just further delay this
02:40 and make that more enticing for the Seminole tribe.
02:45 But who knows at this point,
02:48 it was really funny,
02:50 we were going through the lawsuit as a team yesterday
02:52 and there was a multi-page definition of any
02:57 by this lawsuit.
02:58 So, I didn't think I needed a multi-page definition
03:02 to explain what any means,
03:03 but at this point, yeah,
03:05 it just seems like this is just an interesting tug of war
03:09 kind of situation and really no end in sight at this point.
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