Florida Allows Miami Greyhound Track to Keep Slots and Card Rooms
Late last week, Florida gaming regulators approved a request from the Miami-area Magic City Casino, a greyhound racing track, to “decouple” from dog racing and still keep its more profitable slot machines and card rooms.
The decision by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) is a first for the Sunshine State, but not without prior legal grounding. A 1980 Florida law that allows pari-mutuels in Broward and Miami-Dade counties with a low betting handle for two consecutive years to convert their dog racing permits into jai alai permits. Florida law prohibits commercially operated gambling facilities like card rooms and casinos, with the state’s longstanding policy being to keep gaming contained to casinos operated on Seminole Tribal lands. By switching out greyhound kennels and paddocks for jai alai frontons, Magic City can not only save space and free up its property for more profitable development down the road, it doesn’t have to part ways with its vastly more profitable casino license.
Greyhound Racing Loses Profitability, Down on Popularity
Florida’s 12 greyhound racing tracks generated $240 million in bets during the fiscal year ending in June of 2016, but that number – large as it may seem at a glance – represents a drop of nearly a half compared to 10 years prior. It’s gotten so bad for dog racing that the state regulatory body now spends more regulating the industry than it receives in tax revenues from bets on races. However, state law mandates that only pari-mutuel facilities like dog- and horse- racetracks or jai alai frontons can operate slot machines and card rooms.
The ability to get a casino license is pretty much the only reason for gaming facilities to operate dog-racing tracks these days, it seems. Betting on greyhound racing plummeted from a high-water mark of $3.5 billion in 1991 to $665 million in 2012, and that was five years ago. Nowadays, paid attendance at dog races down 85 percent since 2012, and of the 19 greyhound tracks in the U.S. all but seven are located in Florida, when in the past there were tracks in 15 states.
Lobbyists Keep Dog Racing Going in the Face of Less Interest, More Controversy
Magic City first attempted to switch to jai alai in 2011, but nothing came of it thanks to the lobbying efforts of the powerful greyhound racing and breeding industries. The greyhound lobby argued, and continues to argue, that “decoupling” would effectively bring an end to their entire industry and, consequently, the thousands of jobs related to the raising and racing of greyhounds. Lobbyists have also long made the argument that Florida voters should have the final say when it comes to allowing card rooms and casinos to replace racetracks.
However much importance greyhound racing has a much-diminished industry, it’s on even shakier grounds as an institution, with numerous scandals surrounding concerns for the ethical treatment of the animals adding to and perpetuating dog racing’s unsavory image. At least, but possibly more than 383 dogs have died in the past four years alone at Florida’s 12 tracks, according to numbers published by GREY2K, an activist group advocating for the sport to be banned nationwide. Florida lawmakers have not passed legislation requiring tracks to keep injury records, and a bill to ban steroid doping at greyhound tracks similarly failed last time the legislature was in session.
Additionally, 22 greyhounds have tested positive for cocaine in Florida thus far in 2017. That comes on the heels of a 2014 doping scandal involving a south Florida trainer caught injecting his dogs with anabolic steroids. Similar trends of doping with cocaine as well as steroids and amphetamines were documented in the UK and in Australia as well.
Will Other Greyhound Tracks Follow Suit and “Decouple” from Dog Racing?
Fuzzy interpretation of state law and a perceived vagueness with the DPBR ruling meant there was initially some question as to whether Magic City would be able to affect its “decoupling” plan, although the casino is reportedly moving forward now. There was some question as to whether the DBPR’s Division of Pari-mutuel Wagering declaration required pari-mutuels to operate jai alai matches on the same physical location where greyhound races took place or if the declaration merely meant in the same facility. In either case, frontons take up much less space than racetracks and jai alai players don’t play as many matches as dogs run races, so it’s a winning proposition for casinos in terms of cost savings no matter what.
Florida horse-racing tracks can’t duplicate the switch to jai-alai since they lack a summer jai alai permit option under state law. Opponents of the changes at Magic City claim this discrepancy is proof the DBPR didn’t mean for their decision to set any precedents for other tracks, whether or the horse or dog variety, but other south Florida “racinos” are undoubtedly paying attention now.
The Mardis Gras Casino and Racetrack in Broward County, for one, even tried to stop Magic City from going ahead with its decoupling plans, arguing that its Miami competitor was, in effect, asking the regulatory body to establish a new policy with regard to the expansion of slot machine gaming “beyond the plain terms of the [Florida] Constitution.” The Mardis Gras petition was rejected on the grounds that the DPBR officials couldn’t find a way their decision in Magic City would directly hurt the Broward casino’s business.
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