A proposed ballot initiative seeking to become a Florida Constitutional amendment backed by sports betting giants DraftKings and FanDuel fell short of a petition gathering deadline. The ballot measure is now dead in the water after receiving only 502,903 verified petitions. Constitutional ballot measures require 891,589 verified petitions by February 1 to move forward in Florida’s constitutional process.
The ballot measure was funded by Florida Education Champions (FEC), a political committee formed last summer with the sole purpose of securing their ballot initiative on the 2022 November general election ballot.
The proposal would have legalized sports betting in Florida and the revenue would have been taxed, and the generated taxes would have gone to the Florida Educational Enhancement Trust Fund.
FEC spokeswoman Christina Johnson released an official statement to the campaign’s website thanking supporters for their effort during the petition gathering process.
“We are extremely encouraged by the level of support we saw from the more than one million Floridians who signed our petition and thank them for their efforts in wanting to bring safe and legal sports betting to Florida, while funding public education. While pursuing our mission to add sports betting to the ballot we ran into some serious challenges, but most of all the COVID surge decimated our operations and ability to collect in-person signatures. We want to thank our local Supervisors of Elections and staff members for their diligent work in verifying petitions. We will be considering all options in the months ahead to ensure that Floridians have the opportunity to bring safe and legal sports betting to the state, along with hundreds of millions of dollars annually to support public education.”
The efforts of the group in recent weeks seemingly came too late, as both FanDuel and DraftKings solicited the help of Barstool Sports CEO Dave Portnoy the week before the petition deadline.
Emergency Press Conference – I Am Here to Save Sports Gambling in Florida pic.twitter.com/2Ne6DQ97D9
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) January 14, 2022
The issue of sports betting and gaming in Florida has gained recent popularity. Currently, there are two other campaigns seeking to put a constitutional amendment on the general election ballot. The group Florida Voters in Charge have received financial backing in the millions for two of their proposed ballot measures. One of their measures, Limited Authorization of Casino Gaming, has 762,418 verified petitions as of January 31.
Since Florida Voters in Charge officially filed with the Florida Department of State, they have raised a total of approximately $51.5 million. Seventeen million of that total came from Las Vegas Sands early in their filing period.
Florida Voters in Charge, however, is being investigated for collecting fraudulent signatures.
“It’s not uncommon to find some suspicious signatures,” said Okaloosa Supervisor of Elections Paul Lux to the Northwest Florida Daily News. “But this one is pretty blatant. On one page it looked like the same person had signed all the petitions. The newest person in our office was the one who found it.”
The Seminole Tribe of Florida, who have been battling for their own gaming compact with the state, have been opposed to the gambling expansion funded by out-of-state companies.
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Grant Holcomb is a reporter at the Florida Capital Star and the Star News Network. Follow Grant on Twitter and direct message tips.
Photo “sports betting area” by Sheep”R”Us CC BY NC-ND 2.0.
