Florida Newspaper Launches Blitz Against Legalized Betting Industry

Miami Herald is taking issues with Florida’s sports betting industry. Its team (journalists and editorial staff alike) came out with not one, but two exposes against the industry. And check out the headlines they ran with:

“In Florida, it’s easier than ever to gamble your life savings from the couch”

“Florida legalized online sports betting. Now it can’t ignore the costs”

Shots fired, eh? Headlines Ike this could’ve been a real dagger to the state’s legalized betting industry 25-30 years ago. That’s when newspapers had a monopoly on news and creating narratives.

Today? That power is gone… but it’s also not nothing when the most-read paper in the state openly critiques the gambling industry. If anything, the Miami Herald is riding the current wave against the push to legalize sports betting over the last eight years that’s across the country.

So is the Miami Herald acting in good faith here? Is this a senseless attack? Let’s dig into on this article and offer our honest thoughts on the critiques.

Calls To Florida Helpline Are Exploding

The articles doesn’t say a lot of new things. It’s the usual you can’t now bet anywhere and everywhere thanks to the advent of sports betting apps. The friction of driving somewhere, counting real money, and talking to humans has been removed completely out of the equation. All true, but again, nothing we didn’t already know.

The only real data point the Miami Herald sourced was calls to Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling, an online gambling helpline. From 2023 to last year, calls to the helpline have shot up 138 percent. Not only that, but 41 percent of callers are between the ages of 18 and 25. This metric is up 10 percent since 2023 too.

On the surface, that looks bad, and it sort of is — we don’t want to downplay the real threat of gambling addiction. But at the same time, you’d fully expect calls to skyrocket given how many more people are betting now that weren’t before.

While Florida technically legalized sports betting in the 2021 when Governor Ron DeSantis signed an exclusive compact with the Seminole Tribe of Florida for 30 years. Yes, 30! This compact gave the Seminoles a monopoly on the industry, which they used to launch the Hard Rock Bet app two years later. But… the first few years stalled because of lawsuits (more on that later) that forced Hard Rock Bet to stop accepting app betting until they were settled.

It wasn’t until the summer of 2024 when the Supreme Court ruled that the Seminole’s hub-and-spoke model was NOT illegal that Florida’s sports betting market took off. It’s stayed up since then and exploded in popularity. So naturally, you’re going to get more callers to the hotline because of the surge.

But the Miami Herald doesn’t stop there. To their credit, they also called out the state’s industry for not making an effort to stop problem betting, as we get into the next section.

Florida Is Reactive, Not Proactive, With Problem Gambling

The above headline is what the Miami Herald argues in an op-ed against the industry. Their exact words are “Florida is one of the most permissive and least protective states in the country.”

The Miami Herald cited a ranking done by the Center for Addiction Science, Policy and Research (CASPR). They regularly grade states protections against problem gambling, and gave Florida a whopping 49/100 — that’s an “F” grade, folks. CASPR said the low grade was because Florida’s protections really only kick in after the problem has started, and little to prevent it in the first place.

The article leads with a story about “Jason,” who succumbed to problem gambling hard. He lost one $5,00 bet, then a bunch more trying to “win it back.” He went from having a savings of $100,000 before he began betting in-state in 2023 to now only $5,000 — most of it going to betting losses.

“There’s not a lot of restrictions on sports betting in Florida,” said Jennifer Kruse, executive director of the Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling. “And the costs are not just to the gambler themselves — they’re to everyone: to family members, friends, society.”

Hub-And-Spoke Innovation Not Mentioned

In reading the Miami Herald’s exposes, we were stunned to read little mention of Florida’s so-called “hub and spoke” model for betting. Before this innovation, tribes like the Seminoles and others across the country could only take bets on physical tribal property (per federal law mandated by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act). However, the Seminoles upended everything using this system.

With hub and spoke, anyone can access the Hard Rock Bet app and place a wager. Whether you’re at home, a bar, stuck in traffic, anywhere — not just near Hard Rock casinos. That’s because the servers accepting those bets happen to be on tribal land, this facilitate statewide betting.

This rule is what the Supreme Court decided was fully legal. Florida slammed open the door for other states with tribal betting to do the exact same, and really proliferate online sports betting. The state of Wisconsin just expanded sports betting, and it too, will employ a similar system to accept bets anywhere and everywhere.

If you’re going to critique the Seminoles, the Miami Herald should’ve started here. Every state has problem gambling. Every state could offer more problem gambling protections. But only in Florida did they invent a new model to open up sports betting even more…