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Published on December 24, 2025 at 10:54 am
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A Jacksonville cardroom operator is suing over plans for a new poker room in rural Hamilton County.
The lawsuit was filed in October by Bestbet Holdings Inc., which operates cardrooms in Jacksonville, Orange Park and St. Augustine.
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The Florida Gaming Control Commission filed a motion Friday asking Leon County Circuit Angela Dempsey to toss out the lawsuit.
The lawsuit challenges a July 1 decision by the commission to approve a proposal to add about 23 acres of land to the permitted property of Hamilton Downs Horsetrack. Although Hamilton Downs in the past ran controversial “flag drop” horse races at the site, the additional adjacent land could be used for a poker room.
Because of changes in Florida law, Hamilton Downs doesn’t have to offer horse races but still has a permit to operate a cardroom.
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Bestbet contended in the lawsuit that nothing in Florida law allows Hamilton Downs “to conduct pari-mutuel operations, including a cardroom, at any location other than the location for which it was originally approved.”
But in the motion to dismiss the lawsuit Friday, commission attorneys wrote that the Hamilton Downs proposal “did not request to relocate the Hamilton Downs pari-mutuel facility to a new location” and did not involve transferring or reissuing the Hamilton Downs cardroom license. When Hamilton Downs was initially permitted in 2010, the site included more than 320 acres, the motion said.
“Contrary to plaintiff’s claims, the commission did not issue a new permit to Hamilton Downs and did not authorize Hamilton Downs’ pari-mutuel facility to relocate, as the term is used (in part of state law),” commission attorneys wrote. “Instead the (commission’s) final order approved Hamilton Downs’ application to amend the description of its existing 320.542-acre property to add 23.07 acres.”
The lawsuit said the Hamilton Downs site is within 100 miles of two of Bestbet’s cardrooms and that the commission’s decision “in an arbitrary and capricious manner negatively impacts the plaintiff’s business operations.”
“The plaintiff is in direct competition with Hamilton Downs and stands to lose revenue if Hamilton Downs is permitted to relocate and/or expand,” the lawsuit said.
Commission attorneys described that argument as a “general, speculative fear of harm that may never occur” and contended that Bestbet had not shown legal standing to pursue the case.
“The complaint does not describe what the loss of revenue would be, why the loss of revenue would occur or provide any other facts that show a direct, immediate harm to plaintiff as a result of Hamilton Downs increasing the size of its pari-mutuel facility by 23.07 acres, or 7.2 percent of its existing pari-mutuel facility,” the motion to dismiss said.
Hamilton Downs drew attention nearly a decade ago for holding flag-drop races in which two horses ambled down a dirt path after a red rag on a stick was waved. Hamilton Downs offered the flag-drop races to fulfill part of state law requiring a certain number of horse races to be conducted to maintain its state-issued gambling license.
Such races also allowed pari-mutuel operators to run more lucrative cardrooms.
