Florida is home to numerous betting options both online and in the real world. Legal online gaming in Florida now includes horse racing betting, greyhound gambling and daily fantasy sports. In the physical realm, Florida has horse racing gambling, bingo, conventional casinos and jai alai betting.
Sports betting in Florida doesn’t appear likely at this time. The state has long been eyed as a significant potential market for sport gambling, but changes to state law have made any future gaming expansions harder as they now take a statewide referendum initiated by petition.
Legal Online Betting Options
Let’s start with a fast collection of authorized Florida betting sites and dig into every detail below.
Sports Gambling:
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Fantasy Sports:
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Horse and Greyhound Betting:
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Horse and Greyhound Racing
Online horse racing and greyhound betting are lawful in Florida for decades and a variety of big racing websites accept customers from the Sunshine State. BetAmerica, TwinSpires and TVG all accept Florida customers and are licensed directly here in the United States.
BetAmerica Review
TwinSpires Review
TVG Review
In November 2018, Florida voters approved Amendment 13 to end greyhound racing. The amendment created greyhound racing and betting on live greyhound races held in Florida illegal beginning on January 1st, 2021.
Existing racetracks will still be permitted to offer poker and other games after the change takes effect, but they’ll no longer be able to host live greyhound races. This modification has no impact on internet greyhound racing, which will stay legal because the amendment only attempts to prevent wagers placed on races held in the country.
Fantasy Sports
The legal situation for fantasy sports in Florida is complicated and unclear, but most daily dream sites have served the state for decades with no interference from local officials.
A number of attempts to officially legalize dream sports in Florida have failed over the years due to disputes over how the activity should be categorized and the complexity of tribal gaming contracts between the state and the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
A 1991 Attorney General opinion lumped season-long dream sports in with gaming and opined that it is most likely illegal under state law, but the opinion is obsolete and does not hold legal weight. Just as lawmakers want to clarify the legal standing of fantasy sports, progress has been slow. In the meantime, Florida residents are accepted in both FanDuel and DraftKings:
FanDuel Review
DraftKings Review
Skill Games
Florida gambling law allows games of ability only if entrance fees don’t directly contribute to the prize pool. This signifies is that it’s legal to pay an entrance fee and compete for a fixed prize, but to not play in a contest where all the entrance fees are accumulated to form the decoration pool itself.
For instance, it would be legal to sponsor a paid-entry golf championship if the organizers set fixed prizes which do not change no matter how many people enter the championship. That same tournament could cross the line into illegal territory if prizes were decided by pooling entrance charges and paying the winners a percentage of the prize pool.
A 1990 opinion from the Attorney General summed it up as follows:
«Accordingly, I am of the view that a contest of skill, like a hole-in-one golf contest, in which the contestant pays an entry fee, which does not make up the decoration, for the opportunity to win a prized trophy from the exercise of skill, does not violate the gaming laws of the state. To the extent that previous opinions of the office might be inconsistent with the conclusion reached herein, they are modified.»
WorldWinner.com, that is currently the largest skill gaming website, accepts residents of Florida but restricts them from particular contests where the prize pool isn’t fixed. Follow the link below to read more about WorldWinner:
WorldWinner Review
What about the state lottery?
Florida DOES NOT sell tickets online nor does it provide a subscription service. Of course, you could always try your luck at Experienced lottery resellers that you can find online. I don’t suggest going that path though. It is still illegal to sell lottery tickets online from Florida so any website included in the business is totally untrue and probably located overseas.
Nobody really knows how safe or legit overseas lottery resellers are. They claim to have a team of agents located around the world whose job it is to go around and purchase lottery tickets on behalf of customers. The issue is there’s no way to verify how it actually works.
If you would like to play the lottery, then it is ideal to just go buy your tickets in person. You truly don’t want to leave the fate of your own $40 million jackpot in the hands of a foreign, quasi-legal website. Countries do have the ability to sell tickets online, but Florida does not yet do this.
Sports Betting at Florida
Sports gambling is illegal for besides two exceptions: jai alai betting and cruise ships which sail into international waters to provide sports betting.
The exemption for jai alai betting dates back to a time in Florida through which jai alai was considerably larger than the vague sport it is today. Jai alai came to Florida in the 1920s, and eventually the state became a little of an epicenter for jai alai players across the world because of warm weather yearlong and effortless access from Spain and Latin America, where jai alai is a favorite.
Through its heyday, jai alai was exempted from state and national sports gambling prohibitions. Jai alai maintained a strong presence in Florida through the 1970s but entered a steady decrease in the 1980s amid rising competition from professional sports teams, the lottery and South Florida casinos.
Nowadays, jai alai is a rather niche sport and there are just a couple of active frontons in operation today. For the most part, jai alai survives today primarily due to Florida gaming laws that need card rooms to offer you some form of parimutuel wagering (such as jai alai, greyhound racing or horse racing gambling ). Therefore, most jai alai frontons exist chiefly to facilitate other forms of gaming.
Another»exception» to Florida’s sports betting prohibition happens on the cruise ships operated by Victory Casino Cruises. Victory Casino Cruise ships depart twice each day from Port Canaveral. These ships sail into international waters, open a casino and sportsbook for a couple hours and then come back to beach later that same day.
So far as a widespread legalization of sports gambling, Florida does not seem likely to expand its gaming options anytime soon. There have been no attempts to introduce sports gambling legislation and there have been no recent attempts to legalize sports gambling.
A report from Eilers & Krejcik Gaming listed the 32 countries likely to legalize sports betting within five years of a Supreme Court ruling overturning the federal prohibition of sports gambling. Florida wasn’t contained in that list, but it was contained in a supplemental collection of 12 additional states likely to legalize sports gambling within seven decades of such a ruling.
Can Sports Betting Ever Be Legalized in Florida?
Apart from the exceptions detailed above, sports betting remains illegal in Florida and that’s not likely to change any time soon. Florida has a complex mix of competing interests between lawmakers, Tribal issues as well as the Disney business that have their own comments on the growth of gambling.
The odds of Florida legalizing sports gambling any time soon took a hit in 2018 when voters approved a ballot measure that basically stripped off the state legislature from authorizing any gaming expansion, such as sports gambling.
Previously, the state legislature could have potentially drafted a law to make Florida sports gambling legal. Under the new amendment, Florida taxpayers would need to initiate a campaign to collect signatures to place the issue to a statewide referendum. Subsequently, Republicans would need to accept that referendum by 60 percent to earn sports gambling legal. It is possible, but not very likely at this time.
Is it legal to wager online in Florida?
It depends on what your definition of»legal» is. A few forms of online betting are specifically legal in Florida (horses, greyhounds, dream and skill). It is clearly illegal to run an internet casino, card room or any other company that accepts wagers without the proper licensing.
What isn’t clear is whether it is a crime to place bets online at unlicensed gaming websites. The main text from Florida’s gaming laws reads as follows:
«849.08 Gambling. Whoever plays or engages in any game , keno, roulette, faro or other game of chance, at any place, by any device whatever, for cash or other thing of value, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the second level…»
It seems pretty apparent that this law makes it a misdemeanor offense to take part in obvious gaming games like slot machines, slots, blackjack, craps and so forth. The part that says»by any system whatever» can be easily translated to include the world wide web. However, the country hasn’t once prosecuted a single person for the mere act of putting bets online. Hunting down people playing blackjack on their computers just is not a high priority.
Online poker is a different matter. The above law does not explicitly mention»poker» but it does mention»any game .» But — there’s always a but — that the phrase»other game of chance» seems to imply that just games of chance are forbidden. If poker isn’t a game of chance, this law doesn’t apply.
It doesn’t end there, folks. You and that I might not believe poker a sport of chance, but sure state and federal laws most definitely do specify poker as exactly that. Florida law doesn’t specify games of chance nor does it mention poker and there’s absolutely no case law to fall back on.
Someone would have to push the thing before we ever get Florida’s opinion on the situation of poker being skill or fortune. This likely will not happen anytime soon because nobody is hunting down poker players .
What the Future Holds for Internet Gambling at Florida
A growing number of states are in the process of legalizing online casino and poker games after a federal judge ruled in 2011 the Wire Act of 1961 only applies to sports gambling. Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey have already legalized either internet poker, casino games or even both. State legislators in Florida have not yet moved to alter anything. No legislation is pending at this moment.
It does not look like anything will probably be shifting in Florida any time soon . The state is mostly opposed to the expansion of online gambling. In April of 2014, Florida governor Rick Scott expressed his opposition to expanding online gambling at the federal level with a letter directed to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
In the years since, there have been no real efforts to alter Florida gambling legislation. The current status quo appears quite likely to remain as it is for the foreseeable future.
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