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In a surprise move, Hard Rock Bet has rolled out what appear at first glance to be slots in its Florida sports betting app. Technically, they’re not slots, of course, because online casino gaming is illegal in Florida, while Hard Rock and Seminole Gaming hold a monopoly on legal online sports betting.
Hard Rock’s plan to avoid the ire of Florida regulators is based on the same premise that enables historical horse racing (HHR) machines to operate elsewhere, but adjusted to use motor sports rather than horse races.
“Games powered by Past Motor Races,” is what it’s calling them.
Players are presented with the pre-race odds for a motor racing event that already happened. However, all identifying information about the race, location, date, and participants has been stripped.
The player then guesses the finishing order of these anonymized cars. That, rather than a typical iGaming random number generator, will determine whether the player wins or not. However, that outcome is then presented to the player through a graphical interface that features spinning reels and all the other bells and whistles as you’d find in a video slot.
Early versions of the Seminole Tribe’s sports betting agreement with the state included provisions to negotiate the possibility of adding other types of online gambling to the mix after three years. That deadline would have already passed by now, had that proposal passed.
However, that clause was removed after proving to be a nonstarter with some legislators, whose votes were needed to pass the Implementing Law that accompanied the compact.
So, “Games powered by Past Motor Races” may be the best Florida gamblers can hope for in the absence of actual online casino games. Based on social media commentary, it seems the games are available to some Florida Hard Rock users, but not yet all of them.
Why Motor Races and Not Horses?
It’s important to point out that although Hard Rock’s new games rely on a similar gimmick to HHR, they’re not legally the same thing at all.
In most cases, HHR games are explicitly authorized by states as a way to offer something similar to casino gambling under the umbrella of federal parimutuel law. However, Hard Rock Bet is operating through a compact with the state of Florida, which allows it to offer player-versus-house sports betting.
Horse races fall under parimutuel law, while motor races do not. Player-versus-house betting on past motor races is not something anyone has tried yet, to PokerScout’s knowledge. However, the tribe’s lawyers are evidently confident that it will hold up to any challenge, even if dressed up in a slot machine costume.
Online ‘Historical Racing’ Products Are Rare, But Not Unheard-Of
HHR is generally only seen in a retail environment. There is one notable exception in Luckii, an online HHR app authorized by the state of Oregon.
There was one attempt by a company to unilaterally apply the HHR model to an online app available across the US. That didn’t end well.
PlayUp’s Slots+ app ended up costing the company its chance at an Ohio sports betting license after regulators noticed and objected to its experimental foray into that gray market. It pulled the app off the market in response, but the damage was done, and it abandoned its plans for the U.S. market in 2023.
Things may go better for Hard Rock, however. It is only targeting one state, with which it already has a productive relationship. Notably, it hasn’t attempted to bring the same product to other states where it offers standalone sports betting.
New Jersey is currently the only state where Hard Rock operates an online casino product attached to its sportsbook. However, its heavy investments in bespoke casino content suggest it has broader ambitions in that vertical.
Image Credit: Don Ramey Logan via Wikimedia Commons (license)
