Seminole Tribe Sues DraftKings and Its CEO Over Florida Sports Contracts and Pick6

The tribe that holds Florida's sports betting monopoly wants a Broward County court to shut down DraftKings' prediction-market sports tab and its Pick6 game, and accuses chief executive Jason Robins personally of racketeering. It is suing under state law, in state court, where DraftKings' federal preemption defence has to be won rather than assumed.

• The Seminole Tribe of Florida sued DraftKings, its subsidiary DraftKings Predictions and CEO Jason Robins on 8 October in Broward County circuit court, alleging that the Super App's sports tab and Pick6 are illegal sports betting under Florida law
• The 72-page complaint brings five counts, including an action to enjoin illegal gambling under a Florida statute that lets a compacting tribe sue and a Florida RICO count against Robins alone
• It seeks an injunction against sports wagering in Florida outside the tribe's 2021 compact and disgorgement of profits, which the tribe says it will put towards consumer protection and problem-gambling programmes
• DraftKings says its prediction markets operate under the federal framework of the Commodity Exchange Act and that Pick6 is a peer-to-peer fantasy game, not sports betting
• The suit follows a Ninth Circuit ruling that Kalshi's sports contracts are Class III gaming on tribal land; Kalshi, Polymarket US and Underdog also operate in Florida and have not been sued by the tribe, InGame reports

The Tribe Says DraftKings' Sports Tab Is a Sportsbook Under Another Name

The complaint was filed electronically on Thursday 8 October in the Circuit Court of the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit in and for Broward County, home of the tribe's Hollywood Seminole Reservation, by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker. InGame first reported the suit and published the filing. The defendants are DraftKings Inc., Robins and GUS III LLC, which trades as DraftKings Predictions.

It targets two products. Pick6, launched in Florida in January 2026, lets users pick whether athletes finish "more" or "less" than DraftKings' projections. The Super App, branded DraftKings Sports & Casino and launched in Florida in June 2026, offers moneylines, spreads, player props and parlays through a Sports tab powered by DraftKings Predictions. The tribe says the Florida screens are almost identical to DraftKings' licensed New Jersey sportsbook, that its advertising carries the 1-800-GAMBLER helpline, that it accepts 18-year-olds against Florida's sports betting minimum of 21, and that a switch to decimal pricing on 28 August was "purely cosmetic".

On Pick6, it argues that DraftKings guarantees prize pools, so "DraftKings, in other words, is the house", and cites a 1991 opinion by Florida Attorney General Robert Butterworth that pay-to-play fantasy contests violate section 849.14 of the Florida Statutes.

Five Counts, and a Racketeering Claim Aimed at One Man

The first count rests on section 546.10(8) of the Florida Statutes, which lets the Attorney General, a state attorney and "a federally recognized tribal government ... which is a party to a compact with the state", among others, sue to enjoin violations of the gambling chapter. Alongside it and the RICO count, the tribe claims deceptive trade practices, unfair competition and a declaratory judgment. Beyond the injunction and disgorgement, the tribe asks for nominal damages and fees and says it intends to seek punitive damages later.

The RICO count, against Robins alone, alleges he conducts the affairs of DraftKings Inc. and GUS III through a pattern of racketeering in which every wager from a Floridian is a predicate act. The case for naming him is control: DraftKings' annual report, as quoted in the complaint, gives him about 89% of the voting power, and the National Futures Association lists him as a principal of GUS III. The complaint also uses his own words, including a September 2025 remark that the prediction-market opportunity is "very significant in states that do not have legal online sports betting" and his comment on the Q4 2025 earnings call that "most customers do not really even understand the difference".

The Compact Behind the Claim

The 2021 compact gives the tribe exclusive statewide sports betting for 30 years and deems mobile wagers to take place where the servers sit on tribal land, the hub-and-spoke model behind Hard Rock Bet, in return for at least $2.5 billion in revenue share over the first five years, according to the complaint. When two pari-mutuel operators challenged it, the D.C. Circuit held in June 2023 that the compact authorises gaming only on tribal land and that whether bets placed elsewhere in Florida are lawful "may be a subject for that State's courts", as SCOTUSblog reported. The Supreme Court denied review in 2024.

The complaint says DraftKings put $22.7 million into a failed 2022 ballot campaign, and alleges that it secretly funded the federal case and two state challenges, the latest of which it joined as a plaintiff on 17 September 2026. DraftKings' statement did not address those allegations.

"While the company has deep respect for Seminole Tribe's sovereignty, we remain confident in our legal position," a DraftKings spokesperson said. Governor Ron DeSantis, speaking in Miami on Thursday, said he had not read the suit, but "I think our agreement clearly contemplated that they would have the ability to run this in Florida", FOX 13 reported.

The Tribe Has Made DraftKings Fight on Florida Law's Terms

DraftKings' defence is federal: the Commodity Exchange Act gives the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over contracts on a designated market. That argument has split the appeals courts, with the Third Circuit for Kalshi and the Ninth and Sixth Circuits against it, and none of those rulings binds a Broward judge. The tribe has pleaded only state-law claims and grounded its standing in a Florida statute rather than in IGRA. The state itself is not a party, and Florida's attorney general was not among the 39 who urged the Supreme Court to take New Jersey's Kalshi case. The tribe is using an enforcement power the statute shares with state prosecutors, and no comparable state action against DraftKings has been reported.

DraftKings Is the Easiest Target, Not the Only One

Kalshi, Polymarket US and Underdog also offer sports contracts in Florida and have not been sued. DraftKings supplies its own evidence: it is a licensed sportsbook in about 27 states, runs a near-identical interface in Florida, now reports sportsbook and sports predictions revenue as one number, and has a chief executive on record saying most customers do not understand the difference. That makes the sportsbook-by-another-name argument easier to make against DraftKings than against a pure exchange. It also fits a wider tribal campaign: the Indian Gaming Association's chair has already named DraftKings as the operator tribes intend to punish.

Naming Robins Raises the Cost of Fighting

The RICO count changes little about the remedy, since an injunction against the companies would stop the products either way. What it adds is personal exposure for the man whose public statements form much of the evidence, and a reason to probe how he chose where to launch. It turns a dispute about product classification into one about intent, which is the ground the tribe's account of a ballot campaign, funded lawsuits and then a launch is built for. The allegations are untested, and DraftKings has not yet answered in court.

The tribe has turned DraftKings' own description of its product into the case against it. Whether a Florida court treats that as gambling law or leaves it to the federal question will matter well beyond Broward County.