The political action committee trying to legalize sports betting in Florida through a 2022 Constitutional amendment has already launched its drive for petition signatures on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
The call for petition signatures by the Florida Education Champions PAC began via social media Friday, the day after the Florida Division of Elections authorized the ballot initiative to start. The PAC’s Facebook site appears to have been established Tuesday, June 22.
The effort is backed by DraftKings and FanDuel, two titans in the international sports-betting and fantasy-sports industry. PAC spokeswoman Christina Johnson confirmed those corporations are supporting the petition drive.
Its Facebook page invites readers to submit a request for a ballot petition, which would be sent by mail, and to sign, date, and return it to the PAC in a postage-paid envelope. It needs 891,589 Florida voter signatures and a green light from the Florida Supreme Court for the amendment to be placed on the ballot.
A team of CPAs headed by a political consultant and registered under the name “Florida Education Champions” is sponsoring proposed amendment 21-13 to make sports betting legal statewide, with revenue from the gambling for Florida’s Educational Enhancement Trust Fund. That fund largely includes revenue from lottery ticket sales, plus slot machine activity revenues and other smaller pots of money, according to state revenue estimates.
The money from that fund goes into K-12 public schools and college and universities, student aid and other education-related initiatives.
The Constitutional amendment would thwart a key part of the gambling compact negotiated by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which was ratified by the Florida Legislature May 19. The governor signed into law legislation to implement the compact six days later.
Subject to federal approval, that compact gives the tribe exclusive rights to sports betting, so long as wagers made on mobile devices anywhere in the state are processed by servers located on tribal land. The 30-year agreement promises the tribe will pay the state at least $2.5 billion of its gambling revenue over the next five years.
But the proposed Constitutional amendment would allow providers other than the Seminole Tribe of Florida to do sports betting and mobile sports betting.
In FAQs on the PAC’s website, the group says that sports betting already is legal in Florida.
However, some would say that is debatable because the gambling compact — which involves tribal lands — has not yet been approved by the federal government.
The post Petition drive for sports-betting Constitutional amendment in FL is under way first appeared on Daily Florida Press.
from Daily Florida Press https://dailyfloridapress.com/petition-drive-for-sports-betting-constitutional-amendment-in-fl-is-under-way/
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