Sports Betting to Go Live in Puerto Rico

Back in the early part of 2021, the Mashantucket Pequot announced plans to renovate and reopen its retail casino facility in Puerto Rico. This move represents the Tribe’s first gambling venture outside of its tribal lands in Connecticut. The cost of the proposed project at the time was estimated to be $137 million. It’s important to remember that as a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico operates under the same retail and online gambling rules as what is dictated for U.S. states.

As part of the renovation plan, the Foxwoods El San Juan Casino is scheduled to open a retail sportsbook. Currently, the project has concluded and everything that was promised came to fruition with only the promise of a retail sportsbook to be fulfilled.

Mashantucket Pequot Partners With DraftKings

Just this week, it was announced that the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe has signed an exclusive retail sportsbook contract with none other than DraftKings. The announcement should not come as a surprise given the fact that Tribe and DraftKings already have an ongoing relationship tied to the Foxwoods Casino property in Connecticut. The signing of this new agreement makes it clear that the El San Juan Casino renovation is near complete and DraftKings will be operating the property’s retail sports betting facility in the weeks to come.

According to a press release from Matt Kalish, President of DraftKings North America, “Since establishing our relationship with the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and Foxwoods more than a year ago, we’ve seen immense success, which can be attributed to the collaborative efforts between the organizations and shared vision for providing customers with the very best.”

It’s worth mentioning that prior to Hurricane Maria striking Puerto Rico in 2017, the U.S. territory had a robust gambling community led by the popular Fairmont El San Juan Hotel. Since the hurricane hit, the casino industry had been dormant until the soft launch of Foxwoods El San Juan Casino. Now, Puerto residents will get the opportunity to start wagering on sports events from all over the world.

Will Online Sports Betting Be soon to Follow

It’s worth noting that Puerto Rico passed both Daily Fantasy Sports and Online sports betting legislation in 2019. Admittedly, the government has been very slow to act on the passing of this legislation, though there have been indications there is support for allowing PR residents to participate in such activities.

With the signing of the deal with DraftKings, the U.S. Territory now has a strong advocate to help move sports betting forward in the coming months. If specific sports betting legislation were to start gaining momentum, it’s very possible something could get done by the start of the NFL regular season in September of 2022.

With the opening of the retail sportsbook, PR will join Washington D.C. as the only two U.S. territories to pass sports betting legislation and move forward toward allowing residents to start betting. In the future, it will be interesting to see if any other U.S. territories will make similar moves.