Kentucky receives $300 million in settlement of online gambling lawsuit

Jack Brammer
·2 min read

Kentucky expects to collect $300 million from an Internet gambling site to settle a lawsuit the state brought against the site in 2011, Gov. Andy Beshear announced Wednesday.

Beshear said in a news release that Flutter Entertainment, the parent company of PokerStars, has decided to settle.

“After 10 long years, the commonwealth has not only prevailed but collected dollars that the General Assembly will be able to direct to critical areas, like education, health care and economic development,” said Beshear.

In 2008, J. Michael Brown, then-secretary of the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet under Gov. Steve Beshear, brought actions on behalf of the state in Franklin Circuit Court seeking to stop the unregulated, untaxed and illegal offshore gambling operations that were operating in Kentucky. Brown now is Gov. Andy Beshear’s executive secretary of the cabinet.

From 2007 to 2011, PokerStars, the largest offshore gambling operator, collected almost $300 million in actual cash losses from thousands of Kentuckians who played on PokerStars websites.

Under longstanding Kentucky law, the state brought an action against PokerStars seeking recovery of the nearly $300 million lost by its citizens, and as required by Kentucky law, triple the damages. Last year, the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed that $1.3 billion judgment, which was rendered in December 2015.

Flutter Entertainment and its subsidiary, PokerStars, are located in the Isle of Man, United Kingdom of Great Britain.

PokerStars claimed that the English Protection of Trading Interests Act of 1980 could have prevented Kentucky from collecting the damages upheld by the state’s Supreme Court. The $300 million settlement amount, however, is nearly $10 million above the actual damages awarded by the courts, which was $290,230,077.94.

In April 2021, the Franklin Circuit Court ordered a bond of $100 million to be paid. The bond payment was received in May and an additional $200 million will be added to it.

Kentucky law requires proceeds from the settlement to go to the state’s General Fund, which pays for most state programs.

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