Frankly, online sports betting gets on my nerves. Every third commercial during a sports broadcast these days seems to be for online betting (the others are for beer), and even pregame and postgame commentators sit around and discuss odds to please sponsors.

Maybe informed adults should have a right to make bets online, but whatever happened to family-friendly entertainment?

Online Betting and Agency Authority

Online betting came up today with a student in my Administrative Law class, who is studying this question: Can the Secretary of Interior permit Florida to make an agreement with the Seminole Tribe that treats online sports betting as occurring on tribal land? And if so, what legal questions about online sports betting remain?

In June, the D.C. Circuit upheld the Secretary’s decision to allow the Florida-Seminole agreement to go into effect. That means that someone sitting at home in Miami (or anywhere in Florida) can place a sports bet through the Seminole Tribe and, because the bet is received by a server on Seminole land, the compact treats the bet as occurring on Indian land.

That’s important, because the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) regulates gaming on Indian lands, and nowhere else. And other casinos in Florida can’t do it, so it gives the Seminoles a big boost. Plus, treating the wager as occurring at the place of processing might violate the federal Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which says that the bet occurs where the better is. Can the “Indian lands” exception create a loophole?

The D.C. Circuit said it can (sort of).

According to the court, the Florida-Seminole compact could only regulate gaming on Indian land, but it could discuss other questions related to that. It could, for example, discuss which of them (the State or the Tribe) had jurisdiction over bets placed from elsewhere in the state. And the Secretary could view that discussion as relating to the regulation of gambling on Indian land.

Implications and Questions

This ruling doesn’t mean that all online wagers with the Seminole Tribe suddenly become lawful despite the UIGEA. How Florida, the Tribe, or the federal government treat that activity remains unsettled. It just means the Florida-Seminole agreement could go into effect; the Secretary didn’t have an obligation to disapprove it.

Questions about legality of the bets and rights of gaming competitors will have to be sorted out one by one.

For now, we only know that the Secretary didn’t have to veto the Florida-Seminole compact itself. That may be because the compact itself doesn’t do much. When in Florida (anywhere but on the Seminole lands), you bet at your own risk.

Just please don’t do it on my pregame show.