Florida Racinos: Gulfstream Park, Pari-Mutuel Slots and Lost Racing

How Florida racinos came about

Slot machines reached Florida’s pari-mutuels through the ballot. A November 2004 statewide amendment let voters in Broward and Miami-Dade counties decide whether their tracks and jai alai frontons could add slots. Broward voters approved first, and Gulfstream Park opened its floor on November 15, 2006, the first in the state.

Miami-Dade followed later, and the commission’s records show the floors opening over eight years: the Big Easy site in December 2006, Pompano Park in April 2007, Magic City in 2009, Calder in 2010, Casino Miami in 2012, Hialeah in 2013 and Dania Beach in 2014. Each slot license depends on a pari-mutuel permit.

The Florida Gaming Control Commission now regulates Florida racinos and slot floors through its Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering. The machines are taxed on net slot revenue: in July and August 2026 the eight facilities reported $109.5 million in net slot revenue and about $37.2 million in tax due to the state. The racino revenue guide compares other states.

Florida racinos and slot sites today

Machine counts are the commission’s average for August 2026. Only the first row is a racino in the sense this guide uses, a track where horses still run and slots still spin. The rest are casinos with a pari-mutuel heritage, listed here because many visitors still know them as tracks.

Gulfstream Park carries Florida horse racing on its own. It races year-round across three meets, stages the Pegasus World Cup each January and the Florida Derby in late March, and runs a two-level casino of slots and electronic table games. In July 2025 it was the only slot site in the state that recorded live on-track handle.

The end of horse racing at Calder and Pompano

Calder Race Course opened in Miami Gardens on May 6, 1971, as Florida’s summer track. Churchill Downs Inc. bought it in 1999 and opened Calder Casino in 2010. From 2014 Gulfstream’s owner leased the racing, which ran as Gulfstream Park West, until Calder’s final race in late 2020. The casino continues under a jai alai permit.

Pompano Park opened in 1964 and called itself the winter home of harness racing. It added slots in 2007 and later became Harrah’s Pompano Beach under Caesars Entertainment. After a 2021 law let permit holders keep their casinos without live meets, the final harness card ran on April 17, 2022, and the track was demolished.

That 2021 change, passed in the same special session as the state’s new gaming compact with the Seminole Tribe, is often called decoupling. It cut the link between slot or card room licenses and live performances for many permit holders, ending the requirement that kept marginal meets on the calendar purely to protect a casino license.

Hialeah Park’s second act

Hialeah Park opened on January 15, 1922, and for decades was the country’s best-known winter track, with a flamingo colony on its infield lake. Thoroughbred racing ended on May 22, 2001, and the state revoked the thoroughbred permit in 2004. The grounds sat largely idle until a quarter horse permit brought racing back on November 28, 2009.

Slots followed on August 14, 2013. In the commission’s 2025-26 handle report, Hialeah’s quarter horse permit is marked as no longer running a live meet, and the property operates as Hialeah Park Casino with about 790 machines. The track is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a reminder of when Hialeah defined Florida horse racing.

Greyhound tracks after Amendment 13

Greyhound racing was part of Florida’s pari-mutuel system for close to a century. In November 2018 voters approved Amendment 13 with 69 percent support, banning wagering on live dog races after December 31, 2020. Palm Beach Kennel Club ran the state’s last race at 11:59 p.m. that night. Tracks with slot licenses kept their machines.

The Big Easy Casino in Hallandale Beach opened as the Hollywood Kennel Club in 1934, became Mardi Gras Casino with slots in 2006, and was bought by Jeffrey Soffer in 2018. Magic City Casino in Miami grew out of Flagler Dog Track; the commission lists the permit under Gretna Racing doing business as Magic City Casino since April 2023.

Slots, tables and the rules

Slot machines are allowed at Florida racinos and former tracks, but banked card games with a live dealer belong to the Seminole Tribe’s casinos under its compact with the state. Pari-mutuel properties therefore offer electronic table games for blackjack, roulette, craps and baccarat, and several of them, such as the Big Easy, run licensed poker rooms.

The minimum age for slots at a Florida pari-mutuel is 21. Average payouts are published monthly: Gulfstream’s floor returned 91.5 percent of credits played over July and August 2026, and Pompano’s 90.5 percent. Those figures describe long-run averages, not any single session, and setting a spending limit before playing is a sensible habit.

Racing calendar and where else to go

For live horse racing in South Florida, the calendar is Gulfstream’s: the Championship Meet from late November to March, the Royal Palm Meet through spring and summer, and a fall meet that in 2026 runs Friday to Sunday. Tampa Bay Downs on the Gulf coast races thoroughbreds in winter and spring but has no slot machines.

Visitors who find that Florida racinos offer only one live racing option can look at the Louisiana racinos, where four tracks still combine slots with live meets, or the New York tracks. The history of racinos explains how Florida’s path differed, and what is a racino and the pari-mutuel betting guide cover the basics.