After the Executive Director of the Florida Gaming Control Commission (FGCC) left to take a senior role with FanDuel, a Florida lawmaker is looking to stop that from ever happening again.
Rep. John Snyder’s HB 1467 looks to do many things, such as banning betting on sports with knowledge that results are predetermined, tweaking definitions around fantasy sports, changing criminal penalties for specific offenses and other gambling regulatory matters.
The 92-page bill also includes a provision to prevent someone from accepting a gaming industry job within two years of leaving a role with the Florida gaming regulator.
Nobody who had been employed by the commission in the previous two years would be permitted to be “an employee, associate, owner, or contractor for any person or entity that conducts or facilitates an activity regulated, enforced, or investigated by the commission, including fantasy sports contests and other betting activities,” states the legislation.
Similarly, anyone who violated that provision by working in such a role would be ineligible for appointment to or employment with the commission for two years.
Current and former Florida commissioners are already prevented from doing certain work, such as being a gambling licensee or working for an Indian tribe that has a gaming compact with the state. But the move to ban them from working for any company that falls under the commission’s regulatory oversight is new.
The Trombetta Rule?
The move to prevent ex-Commission workers from taking gambling jobs is particularly interesting, given recent context.
FGCC Executive Director Louis Trombetta resigned from his post in December and soon afterward took up the position of Director of Government Relations at FanDuel.
Trombetta had led the FGCC from its creation in March 2022 until his exit. The commission was created to oversee state gambling after Gov. Ron DeSantis struck a new compact with the Seminole Tribe for sports betting exclusivity.
During Trombetta’s tenure, the commission chased out against-the-house fantasy sports operators such as PrizePicks, Underdog and Betr. Those companies later re-entered the state with a focus on peer-to-peer DFS. The commission did not declare that it had sent similar cease-and-desist letters to FanDuel or DraftKings, which both offer P2P DFS.
Snyder told the Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau that the measure in his bill is not a direct response to Trombetta’s career choices but a more general attempt to ensure “fairness in the marketplace”.
“Any time you have a regulator in a position to make significant decisions on the industry, I think it’s important they sit on the bench for a little bit before they get back into it,” the bill’s sponsor told the news outlet.
“FanDuel is not a sports betting or iGaming license holder in the state of Florida and is not subject to regulatory oversight by the FGCC,” FanDuel told SBC Americas in a statement. “Therefore, we do not believe it’s appropriate to comment on pending legislation currently being considered.”
A FanDuel spokesperson told the Bureau that Trombetta was chosen as part of a public hiring process hunt, and stressed that he voluntarily filed a public disclosure on Nov. 15, transferring the responsibility for managing confidential information to a deputy director.
HB 1467 is awaiting a hearing in the Florida House Industries & Professional Activities Subcommittee.
