Florida legislature adjourns without passing decoupling bill

The Florida legislature adjourned its regular 2026 session on Friday without the state Senate taking up a bill that would have allowed Gulfstream Park to decouple its racing and casino licenses, the second straight year that a decoupling measure failed to win approval.

The decoupling effort has been supported by Gulfstream’s parent company, 1/ST Racing and Gaming, but has met opposition from nearly every other Thoroughbred constituency in the state. Opponents have said that decoupling would lead to Gulfstream to cease live racing and focus instead on a redevelopment of its property centered on a casino or to seek an outright sale of the property.

A measure allowing for decoupling easily passed in the House this year, but the bill was never taken up in the Senate for discussion, even at the committee level. Opponents of the effort had predicted that the Senate would be a much harder sell than the House.

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Officials for the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association, which has led the opposition to the bill in the past two years, hve said that they are working on a compromise piece of legislation that would likely be ready to be introduced next year. The legislation may center around the development of a new track in Ocala.

Earlier this year, Gulfstream reached a three-year live racing agreement with its horsemen that guarantees 180 days of live racing this year, 140 days of live racing in 2027, and 120 days of live racing in 2028. In recent years, the track has generally held approximately 200 days of live racing each year.

Gulfstream is located on extremely valuable land in Hallandale Beach, Fla., part of the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale metro area.

Last year, a decoupling bill that would have guaranteed live racing through 2030 passed in the House but never got to a floor vote in the Senate after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that he opposed the legislation.

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