Florida’s sports betting market was supposed to have only one player: the Seminole Tribe, which holds exclusive rights through its Hard Rock Bet platform. But DraftKings found a way into the state, and now the fight has landed in a Broward County courtroom.
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On Thursday, the Seminole Tribe of Florida filed a 72-page lawsuit against DraftKings, CEO Jason Robins, and GUS III LLC, alleging the company is operating an illegal sportsbook in Florida through Pick6 and its newer DraftKings Sports & Casino “Super App.”
The Tribe is asking the court to shut down those operations and recover profits it says were obtained unlawfully. They also argued that DraftKings spent years trying to change Florida’s gambling laws. Then it turned to prediction markets and other products that, in its view, accomplish the same thing without obtaining a Florida sportsbook license.
“Every wager that (DraftKings) now accept through their illegal sportsbook siphons away revenue that funds both the Tribe’s and Florida’s public programs and government services; diverts betting from Florida’s regulated system into an underground, unregulated, and outlawed book; and deprives the Floridian who places such a bet of the consumer protections guaranteed by Florida law,” the lawsuit stated.
To truly understand the “why” of this challenge, though, we need to look at the rules that shaped Florida’s sports betting market.
State law says sports wagers made by people physically located anywhere in Florida through mobile devices are treated as being conducted by the Tribe when the servers handling those wagers are on tribal lands.
The Florida Gaming Control Commission also says that, generally, online sports betting outside sportsbooks operated by or in conjunction with the Seminole Tribe is likely illegal. That arrangement goes back to the 2021 gaming compact between the Tribe and Florida, which gave the Tribe exclusive sports betting rights in exchange for payments to the state.
DraftKings has gone in a different direction.
The company rolled out Pick6 in Florida in January. The game lets users pick whether a player will finish over or under a projected statistic, then combine those picks into a parlay. The Seminole Tribe says that it is essentially the same thing as betting on player props, which the state’s Gaming Compact gives exclusively to the Tribe.
In June, DraftKings launched its Sports & Casino Super App. The company describes the product as a unified platform bringing Sportsbook, Predictions, Casino and Lottery together, with access determined by the rules of each jurisdiction.
In Florida, however, the Seminole complaint alleges the Sports tab gives users conventional sportsbook markets, including moneylines, spreads, totals, player props, and parlays.
The complaint says this goes beyond creating another fantasy-style game. In the Tribe’s view, DraftKings has taken sports betting and repackaged it as a prediction product. The lawsuit also relies on comments from DraftKings CEO Jason Robins.
The Tribe cites Robins saying customers using the company’s prediction products “do not really even understand the difference” between those products and a traditional sportsbook. It also points to his comments about expanding into states “where we don’t have legal sports betting.”
DraftKings, though, has a reason to push prediction markets aggressively. The company said in March that Predictions could allow it to reach nearly the entire U.S. population, including states without regulated online sports wagering. It also projected a broader 2030 industry opportunity of $55 billion to $80 billion.
The Tribe is also going after the financial side of DraftKings’ strategy. According to the complaint, prediction markets can be much more profitable than traditional sports betting because they are not subject to the same state betting taxes.
The filing cites DraftKings’ own estimates that prediction products could produce margins 10 to 30 percentage points higher than sports betting. It also points to comments from Robins, who described avoiding those taxes as the “main thing” driving the higher margins.
The Seminole Tribe argues that bets placed through DraftKings’ products in Florida are money that never enters the state’s regulated sports betting system. The compact also has a financial side.
The Seminole Tribe agreed to give Florida a cut of the gambling revenue, with the state guaranteed at least $2.5 billion over the first five years. The state received $1.04 billion under the compact in the fiscal year that ended June 30, more than $200 million more than the previous year. State economists also expect that revenue to keep growing.
“Sports betting continues to grow at a significant rate in Florida, both as a share of all tribal gaming options and as a stand-alone activity,” state economists wrote in an August revenue forecast.
There are rules attached to that deal, too. Customers have to be checked for age, gambling protections have to be in place, and the operation is subject to audits and money-laundering controls. The Tribe’s lawsuit says DraftKings is not playing by those same rules.
It alleges that people as young as 18 can use the company’s prediction products, while Florida requires customers to be 21 to place legal sports bets.
Now, if the Tribe’s exclusive sports betting rights are ultimately weakened, the consequences could extend beyond the state. The Tribe could suspend payments to Florida if its monopoly is breached, putting a major source of public revenue at risk.
DeSantis, meanwhile, appeared to side with the Tribe when he was asked about the lawsuit Thursday in Miami.
“The Tribe were given the purview on sports betting,” DeSantis said. “I haven’t read the thing. I just heard about it this morning, but I think our agreement clearly contemplated that they would have the ability to run this in Florida.”
But DeSantis did touch on the fact that Florida may not have the final say over the broader prediction-market fight.
“The question is that if you have a certain regime on sports gaming, and then the prediction markets come in, does that fall under that or do they just get to do it?” he said.
According to him, the issue could reach federal appeals courts and Congress.