TRIBAL GAMING
The Seminole Tribe of Florida’s “hub-and-spoke” model for mobile gaming – opportunities and unresolved questions
Overview For many Native American Tribes, gaming revenue has long been a key resource for government services, economic development, and community investment. With the gaming industry’s inexorable shift to the internet, Tribes must find ways to remain competitive by participating in online markets. The uniquely complex legal and regulatory landscape governing Indian gaming demands creative solutions to achieve this. The Seminole Tribe of Florida has developed just such a solution, which is attracting interest from Tribes around the country. In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court removed any remaining legal uncertainty about the approach to state-wide mobile gaming advanced by the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the State
of Florida in their landmark 2021 Class III Gaming Compact. The Court declined to take up a commercial operators’ challenge to the D.C. Circuit’s decision in West Flagler Associates, Ltd. v. Haaland , which upheld the validity of the Department of the Interior’s decision to allow the agreement to take effect. The approach involves a combination of state law and federal law pursuant to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), and can now provide a potential blueprint for Tribes in other states to follow a “hub-and-spoke” model in which online sports betting wagers placed anywhere within a state are received and processed at servers on a Tribe’s Indian lands. But key questions remain about how to adapt this approach to fit the varied political and legal realities faced by Tribes in states other than Florida.
IMGL MAGAZINE | MARCH 2025
PAGE 6
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker