Online Gambling In Florida: What You Need to Know

The state of Florida enjoys its tried-and-true gaming venues, from the state lottery to the reliable Seminole Tribal casinos. Recent attempts to expand gambling have met with some resistance, but for now, the Sunshine State has several certified ways for residents and tourists alike to part with their paychecks in the hope that Lady Luck might be on their side. In addition to the eight roomier-than-most tribal casinos, which include a couple of versions of “Hard Rock,” Florida has 12 pari-mutuel venues (mostly at racetracks), where you can safely place bets on horses and dog races.

Florida has its fair share of poker and card games. You can find poker rooms in numerous race tracks throughout the state. They offer tournament poker in addition to cash games. Unfortunately, these poker rooms adhere to some pretty tight and pretty silly rules about bet size. Also, it’s important to note that high-stakes home games might bring you some unwanted attention from law enforcement. They can also attract local “wannabe” gangsters who think they’re players.

A major blow to online gaming in Florida came in 2013 when the state legislature passed House Bill 155, which effectively closed the door on internet gambling in Florida. The bill put an end to internet cafés that were using loopholes to offer gambling that was against the law. Although these internet cafés offered more than just gambling, if you can imagine a really laptop-friendly Starbucks, they were also the home to over 1,000 jobs. By law, however, these cafés were not allowed to offer online gambling, and the bill that passed in 2013 put a stop to that, for better or worse. Since then, there has been no talk of any kind of online or even “offline” gambling that’s not firmly in the realm of “illegal.”

The history of gambling in Florida is a tale of contrasts. It is punctuated by a series of expansions and contractions, with tribal casinos, commercial casinos, and a sometimes-conflicted state government trying to sort out all the simultaneous demands for more and better regulatory controls and for less and more efficient regulation. Since it became legal, Florida has had to repeat the tired old saw that with gambling comes responsibility. And over the decades, as dial-up became broadband and poker-faced Internet avatars replaced beer-bellied poker buddies, the rule has applied with even more force to online gambling. But don’t expect too much in the way of cyberspace avatars anytime soon, either.

The question “Is online gambling legal in Florida?” currently has a short answer: no, it is not. Although some states have moved toward a more fully developed online gambling scene, in Florida you won’t find a regulated online poker room or a safe place to gamble in a virtual casino.

The best you have right now is a good old-fashioned lottery, along with regulated gambling in places that take bets on the results of horse races. If you’re a Florida resident who can walk into an international or Florida-based sportsbook, you’re doing much better than most people who want to legally gamble online. But short of that, the options are limited—and leaving the state may be your best bet.