Alabama Tribe Offered to Cut Blackjack for Poker Room in Florida

This week it was revealed that the Poarch Creek Indian tribe out of Alabama approached Florida Governor Rick Scott in 2014 to abandon their offering of blackjack games in exchange for the rights to open a poker room in the Sunshine State, a proposal that was eventually shot down.

The proposed deal would have seen the tribe getting the rights to a poker room in exchange for $1 billion paid out over a period of five years as well as the abandoning of plans to offer blackjack at its casinos. The deal was quickly opposed by Florida Indian tribes, and the proposal was quickly abandoned.

A letter from the tribe to the Governor discussing the plan was unveiled, and read in part: “We believe that our proposal provides an approach to address multiple gaming-related concerns that affect the state. Provided that suitable consideration can be agreed to, the expansion of Class III gaming will not occur, and in fact, our proposal to ‘give up’ four of our permits reflects a reduction of gaming.”

The revelation of the proposed deal comes as the State is working with the Seminole tribe to pass through a compact that gives the group exclusive rights to offer blackjack in Florida in exchange for billions of dollars. That deal is currently being debated in the state House.

This blog entry was posted on Friday, February 26th, 2016 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Blackjack News.