South Florida’s Sun Sentinel contacted us again after the Benny posting on Tigers site and a story on Dania’s reopening in the Pelota Press. It’s a good story about the great news that indeed, Dania is reopening.
There will be a tournament over the first two weekends in April that will feature up and coming stars. There is a $5 admission fee per day with $25 tickets to see the entire event. There is no pari-mutual or sports wagering offered on this event.
Then in December and January, live jai-alai will resume with a 22–24-man roster and betting pari-mutual style will take place. As we have said before, the owners love jai-alai and want it to continue but not at the loses of what is likely well over a million dollars a year. By holding the season in those two months they can profit from a lot of tourists in town and avoiding any overlap with the Magic City Jai-alai season. As noted in the article below, the best two weeks of the year, handle wise, are generally the last two weeks of the year and Dania had been shut down at that time.
Also, regarding the story below, there is one correction I want to make. I did not have anything to do with the bus loads of players coming from Tampa. I wasn’t even aware – if there ever was one. I did say there were abut 40-50 people from the Tampa area on the Saturday night at Dania when asked and I said they were mostly ex-pros from Tampa.
It’s not dead: Jai alai returning to longtime Dania Beach home
By Ron Hurtibise South Florida Sun Sentinel Feb 19, 2022 at 6:00 AM
Reports of the death of jai alai in Dania Beach, it turns out, were premature.
Owners of The Casino at Dania Beach, which pulled the plug on the longtime parimutuel sport a year shy of its 70th birthday at the site, have decided to bring it back after all.
First, the venue will stage a seven-day round robin exhibition tournament, with no betting, over the first two weekends of April.
Then in December, the parimutuel version will return for an eight-week season running through the end of January.
The announcements this week were eagerly greeted by longtime jai alai fans, said Jeff Conway, who runs a jai alai blog called pelotapress.com.
”They are happy,” Conway said of fans on Thursday. “They’re surprised but they’re happy. They thought it was pretty much over.”
Jai alai players compete in one of the last matches last November before owners of The Casino @ Dania Beach pulled the plug on the longtime parimutuel after its fall season. Based in part on an uptick in attendance in the sport’s final two weeks, the casino announced that jai alai will return as an exhibition tournament in April and a two-month parimutuel schedule in December and January. (Michael Laughlin/Sun Sentinel)
That’s how things sounded in September, when the casino’s owners announced that the sport wouldn’t be returning in spring 2022 after the fall season closed on Nov. 28. They negotiated buyouts of 26 players’ contracts that ran for the four months ending in May.
The decision left only Magic City Casino in Miami with regular jai alai operations. It also evoked feelings of sadness and nostalgia among current players, former players and fans who have watched longtime venues close up one by one across the state in recent decades.
Players and support staff at the Dania casino “went through a very emotional period at the end of 2021,” said Benny Bueno, a former player who served as the casino’s jail alai operations manager for more than a decade. ”Everyone took the decision as though it was going to be permanent.”
The backstory
They understood the reasoning, Bueno said. The popularity of jai alai, a centuries-old sport founded in the Basque regions of Spain and France and introduced to the United States in 1904, had steadily fallen since peaking between the 1950s and 1980s. In its heyday, thousands of fans regularly packed fronton grandstands, largely because jai alai frontons were among the few places that allowed legalized gambling.
Then came the Florida Lottery, casinos on cruise ships and Seminole Indian reservations, Major League Baseball, professional basketball, and finally, new laws allowing declining parimutuels to offer casino games.
But there was a catch: Those laws required parimutuels to keep their sports going — even as crowds and betting totals dwindled — as a condition of offering the more lucrative casino games.
Betting via closed-circuit television blossomed, followed by betting via online streaming video. Gamblers no longer needed to leave their homes. Dania Jai Alai Fronton became The Casino @ Dania Beach, with multiple events and attractions. As jai alai’s prominence diminished, attendance at the fronton dwindled to a few dozen each night.
Finally last spring, the Seminole tribe and the Florida Legislature negotiated an agreement allowing parimutuels in the state to “decouple” their unprofitable horse racing and jai alai attractions.
Although the Dania Beach casino’s Argentinian owners supported jai alai, the decision was a no-brainer, Conway said. “If I had to guess, I’d say they were losing $1 million a year on jai alai,” he said. Players, too, saw their incomes drop as nightly betting totals declined.
A glimmer of life
And then, amid the sadness of the season’s final weeks, as the final weekend drew closer, something inspiring happened, Bueno said.
Fans returned to say goodbye. They came by car from Florida cities that once hosted jai alai, and they came by plane from other states where the sport was once popular. Conway helped to gather former players and diehard fans from the Tampa area who arrived aboard two charter buses.
There were more people and money bet over the last two weeks than the venue had seen in years, Bueno said.
On the season’s last Saturday night on Nov. 27, the Dania Beach venue was packed — both the 500-seat grandstands and the standing areas, Conway said. “You couldn’t even walk through,” he said.
Those last crowds “demonstrated that this sport is still alive,” Bueno said. And it got him and the casino’s owners brainstorming ways to continue jai alai’s tradition in Dania Beach.
For the April exhibition tournament, a mix of the venue’s veterans and some of the sport’s rising stars from Spain and France who have never played in Dania Beach will compete to split $21,000 in prize money, he said.
The parimutuel season in December and January will be a test run to see if a scaled-down version can make financial sense, he said. If successful, the season could be extended.
Conway thinks the owners might keep it going even if they can break even. “It gives them another attraction for the casino — something most other casinos don’t have,” he said.
In recent years, the sport has taken a break for two weeks at the end of December. But historically, those two weeks have been among the biggest in terms of attendance and betting handles, Conway said. Playing during those weeks, when Floridians are on holiday break and tourists swarm to the state, could help the experiment succeed, he said.
It would also allow something that didn’t seem possible in November — a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the opening of Dania Jai Alai Fronton on December 28, 1953.
Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071, on Twitter @ronhurtibise or by email at rhurtibise@sunsentinel.com.
In the pic Henry, Jesus Rubio, Julio R, Jesus, Tirillo and Super Jules.
2nd place winners Jesus and Jesus.
North Miami Amateur Jai-alai held a big tournament this past weekend and here are the results:
Special thanks to Jesus O. for all the details and photos.
The two-day tournament had two groups of 5 players in each group both front and back.
Group A Fronts
Pichy
Caby
Jesus (Rubio)
Jules (Super Jules at Calder)
San Juan
Group A Backs
Belota
Mitch
Monte
Tirillo
Jesus O.
Group B Fronts
Jose
Julio Rosales
Ivan
Joe G
Scott
Group B Backs
Henry
Jerry
James
Peter
Bob
Tournament format
5 games to 10 points with rotating partners. The top 5 scores of fronts and top 5 of the backs played Sunday (the second day) with groups mixed.
Results
In the back
Tirillo won with 81 points
Jesus O. came in second with 74
Henry came in third with 63
In the front
Julio R won with 74 points
Jesus (from Calder aka Rubio) came in second with 71 points
Three players tied for 3rd with 67 points (what are the odds of that?). Then they had to play a singles match with Jules winning and ending up finishing in third over Caby and Pichy who lost in the playoff game.
As we reported over a month ago, Dania Jai-alai will be staging a two-month season coming up this December and January in addition to the exhibition they will be holding in April. The news was confirmed by Benny in a posting on Tigers site this morning.
The fronton has applied to the State to conduct live games during the timeframe of December 2022 and January 2023. There will be pari-mutual wagering during those two months with state approval while no wagering will be allowed on the 10 day tournament in April.
Benny said that by early summer he will be looking at putting together an all-star roster for that two-month season.
It is expected to have 22-24 players on the roster.
More details will emerge as time goes on. This is great news – so full court jai-alai lives on!
Everyone out there needs to support them and Magic City so jai-alai will continue.
Here is the Press Release from Dania Casino on the big jai-alai news that Dania has a big tournament scheduled.
We will get more details soon.
Dania Beach Jai-Alai Presents Battle at the PalaceApril 1-10 at The Casino @ Dania Beach
World’s Top-Ranked Players Compete inExhibition Tournament for $21,000 in Cash and Prizes
DANIA BEACH, Fla. (February 14, 2022) – Some of the world’s best Jai-Alai players from the Basque region of Spain and France will return to the fronton at The Casino @ Dania Beach to compete in the Battle at the Palace team invitational April 1-10, 2022.
Paying homage to the original Dania Jai-Alai Palace, which in its heyday in the ‘70s and ‘80s drew thousands of fans to the stands, this first-ever exhibition tournament will pair 16 of the sports’ top-ranked players as they compete in elimination rounds for more than $21,000 in cash and prizes.
“Generations of fans have enjoyed this exciting sport in our fronton,” said Arnaldo Suarez, CEO of The Casino @ Dania Beach. “We’re excited to help carry on the nearly four-hundred-year tradition of Jai-Alai and host this special exhibition tournament which brings together some of the world’s most talented players.”
Jai-Alai has been dubbed the fastest moving ball sport in the world by Guinness World Records. After hosting Jai-Alai games for almost 70 years as home to the last remaining full court frontons in America, the final regulation Jai-Alai game was played at The Casino @ Dania Beach on November 28, 2021.
“Jai-Alai is a tight community with a global brotherhood of players and devoted fans,” said Benny Bueno, Jai-Alai Player Manager at The Casino @ Dania Beach. “This tournament is our way of celebrating these exceptional players, entertaining our devoted fanbase and doing our part to ensure the sport’s legacy lives on.”
The Battle at the Palace invitational will feature doubles competitions in elimination rounds with two games each night.
Dania Beach Jai-Alai Presents Battle at the Palace Schedule
Round One:
Friday, April 1 at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 2 at 7p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Round Two:
Sunday, April 3 at 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.
Thursday, April 7 at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Semi-Finals
Round Three:
Friday, April 8 at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 9 at 5 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Final
Sunday, April 10 at 12:30 p.m.
Format
The event will feature 21 point Partido’s with no gambling.
Matt DiDomizio has added a date for his next big tournament and is now going to be held on from Friday, April 29th, Saturday and Sunday May 1st. The Friday date has been added to make the event a 3-day affair. On a special note, white pants will be required for all performances – and that includes you Rocco and Anthony! The entry fee will be the usual $50 and that includes playing time for all 3 days plus practice time as allowed beforehand.
Matt’s Connecticut Amateur Jai-alai facility, located in Berlin, Connecticut, is just one of the three remaining in the United States. They will be celebrating their 12th Anniversary.
This is a remarkable achievement, but on the sadder sad of things, the event will hold a special memorial for Loren Harris. Loren was truly the top ambassador for the sport of jai-alai and dedicated his life to training young kids the great sport of jai-alai in the United States and Mexico. He passed away last month of a heart attack while in Cancan.
Matt’s tournament will not be a “pick you partner” event like the last one. Details of the format will come soon, and we will post it as soon as Matt gets it to us. This is a great time of the year to be up there. The weather is usually perfect (maybe a bit on the cool side at night) and right around the time the dogwoods are blooming.
Make your travel plans soon to save on airfare and hotel rooms. There are several hotels within 5-10 minutes of his court. For those traveling from Florida and elsewhere, there are a couple of new low-cost airlines offering service in addition to the usual JetBlue and Southwest Airlines. Avelo Airlines offers nonstop flights to a small New Haven airport from several cities with prices so low you will be amazed. New Haven is about the same distance away from the Cancha as (dreadful) Bradley Airport, which is halfway between Hartford and Springfield Massachusetts. New Haven is the home to Yale University, several world acclaimed pizza parlors and the hamburger. Another new airline is Breeze Airways
The plans look amazing. It’s a $500 Million Dollar project that would change the landscape on the site of the former Orlando Jai-alai property forever. But with a small poker room in the plans – encompassing just 5% of the overall picture – was the sticking point. Seminole county commissions, in a 5-0 vote killed the entire project.
It is totally amazing that such a massive and game changing project would be turned down for something that has been taking place on the very same property for decades – until the fronton was closed and currently rented out to a church (of all things!).
Richard Burdoff, owner of the 50-acre site that had hosted Jai Alai for over 50 years, teamed up with developers the Cordish Companies for a high-density, mixed-use development called Oxford Park. The project would include about 1,200 luxury apartments, high-end retail stores and a large country music themed restaurant/sports entertainment venue that would host poker and perhaps sports betting (if ever allowed again).
“There will be no slots, no blackjack, no other casino,” Mark Jones, attorney for developers Cordish Companies said. “This is a small poker room. Of the 50,000 square foot venue, it is only 5%.”
Unfortunately, it’s that small poker room that put a halt in the project moving forward. Because the plans have this “element of gambling” in it, in order to get the project approved, the citizens would have to vote on it on the November ballot. The developers have two ways to get it on the ballot- get 25,000 signatures through a citizen petition or get the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners to draft and approve an ordinance to put it on the ballot.
“We are here to ask the commissioners put this matter on the ballot for the voter to decide if they want this incredible project to go forward,” Jones said.
The developers explained to the commissioners they didn’t want to go door-to-door to get citizens’ signatures because of other petitioners fighting for gambling in Florida. This would include the large Vegas hotels trying to get casinos approved in Jacksonville and possible other northern Florida locations. Statewide ads have been running in Florida markets urging people not to sign the petition going on. They believed it would only confuse citizens more, which is true.
“We would get misunderstood. That is not what we are about,” said David Cordish, Chairman of Cordish Companies. “It’s a small social. It would be a mistake for us to go out in the face of these massive petition drives that are going on that we have nothing to do with.”
Only four residents in the courtroom were in favor of the project while several others were opposed.
After the 5-to-0 vote, the county commissioner Lee Constantine said, “I just didn’t feel this is the right move for Seminole County,” .
“To bypass the citizen petition and that’s going to be expected on other issues,” Commissioner Andria Herr said. “I can’t get past the fact that if the poker room doesn’t go through, we can’t go through with this project.”
Mark Jones, the attorney for the development, said the plans look dead at this time stating it would be impossible to get 25,000 signatures in three months.
Will they pull out of the gambling business altogether and proceed with the project? Seems like their only option at this point. Getting gambling approved again in Seminole county would be as difficult as hitting back to back spins of a major jackpot on a slot machine.
MIAMI, Feb. 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Magic City Jai-Alai, the only professional jai-alai fronton in the United States, launches its fifth season on February 14 with the announcement of three multi-year content distribution deals of its Jai-Alai H2H* (Head-to-Head) and H2H Battle Court seasons. The content distribution partnerships with FTF Sports, LaLiga Sports TV and Triple-B Media dramatically broadens the reach of the world’s fastest ball sport to a combined potential audience of 115 million households.
Battle Court H2H Schedule
“We are thrilled to be partnering with FTF Sports, LaLiga Sports TV and Triple-B Media to bring the most exciting ball sport in the world to a mainstream audience. Today’s historic announcement demonstrates our long-term commitment to the sport of jai-alai, and these partnerships will enable us to engage fans like never before,” said Scott Savin, Chief Operating Officer at Magic City Casino, home of Magic City Jai-Alai.
The games are currently viewable via the Jai-Alai app and www.watchjaialai.com. The new distribution deals will allow content subscribers to catch the live action of 15 head-to-head matches per week through Samsung TV Plus, The Roku Channel, Xumo and other leading platforms.
“This is a strategic mix of content partners that sees the potential in this thrilling sport and supports us to amplify its reach and its long-term viability,” continues Savin.
FTF Sports is an emerging free ad-supported television sports network serving the passionate fan’s appreciation for competition, sportsmanship and performance. FTF features a 24/7 broadcast, including live and on-demand video (VOD), games, events, analysis and a variety of original programming. FTF will carry the majority of Magic City’s 2022 game days live, along with other archived content.
LaLiga Sports TV is an over-the-top (OTT) media platform that offers free coverage of live and pre-recorded content, with an approximate reach of 1.9 million viewers. The platform offers greater visibility and exposure of other sporting disciplines that are not covered by the traditional channels and whose content is disseminated in a limited way amongst fans. The distribution to LaLiga illustrates the significant international following of the sport.
Triple-B Media is a full-service television and digital media company, specializing in the operation of free, ad-supported television networks. To date, Triple-B Media owns or operates six television networks including FTF Sports, Lacrosse Sports Network, Fido TV, ACL Cornhole TV, MotoAmerica TV and Billiard TV. Triple-B is creating a stand-alone FAST channel, Jai Alai TV, that will feature live matches as well as archived content including past tournaments, player bios and game explanation videos. The channel will also feature more than 300 hours of library matches. Specific distribution agreements for Jai Alai TV will be announced in the upcoming months.
*Jai-Alai H2H is an alternate form of play to traditional parimutuel jai-alai that features two or four similarly skilled players competing against each other in a setup similar to tennis. The H2H format aims to make the game easier to understand and wager on.
About Magic City Jai-Alai Since 2018, Magic City Jai-Alai has presented an innovative take on the sport of jai-alai by taking the best features of the “world’s fastest game,” combining them with a state-of-the-art glass court and marrying these to the skill sets of an athletically-diverse roster. The fronton at Magic City Jai-Alai is located at 450 N.W. 37th Avenue in Miami. For more information on the Magic City Jai-Alai program, go to www.magiccitycasino.com/jai_alai, www.jaialaichannel.com or www.watchjaialai.com.
About FTF Sports FTF Sports is owned by Lax United Marketing which also distributes lacrosse programming under Lax Sports Network/LSN brand. The FTF Sports networks are available for free in 115M households, in the United States and in select countries outside the United States, via Samsung TV Plus (Channel 1167), Xumo (Channel 711), The Roku Channel (Channel 228), Twitch, DistroTV (Channel 38), Local Now, Fanatiz, SelecTV, Zingo, and others. For more information on FTF, please visit www.ftflive.com or connect with our PR Contact – Rob Wallace / rwallace@ftflive.com
Dania Jai-alai has not shut down for good. And the hotel has not started construction on where the court exists now.
An announcement will be coming soon that Dania jai-alai is coming back, but not to expect a full-roster, full year-round action.
What will be announced is hush hush, but there could be about a two-month season – with pari-mutual wagering and a limited roster. It could also feature tournaments and Partido’s, which are always exciting to watch and bet. The season likely would run in the months of December and January while capitalizing on prime tourist season.
But nothing is official. As we have said before, the owners like Jai-alai and they love Benny. They have never announced that they were closing for good, and even during the final two performances, Benny has hinted “never say never”.
Magic City is getting prepared for its 5th season, which starts this Valentine’s Day. Players have started practicing Tuesday.
The schedule is a little different this year, with performances Sunday, Monday and Tuesdays. Pari-mutual Wagering Performances will start at 1:30pm and H2H Sports Betting Performances will start at 5pm. The Saturday performances are gone. The H2H betting is only available in a handful of states as of now, with this clearly being the future of Magic City jai-alai. Fans will only be allowed in on Sundays for both performances with special admittance if you request it in advance.
It is obvious that the are targeting the sports betting end of it and have acknowledged they will lose money this year. The goal is to have as many states as possible on board that offer sports betting. The days and hours of play has irritated many longtime pari-mutual betters, but these hours and dates (Sunday, Monday and Tuesday) are clearly an attempt to get betters who would normally not have many options at this time. In fact, there is likely nothing being offered by the major 4 sports at those hours with football over with, Sunday MLB games over with, while hockey and basketball games are starting a couple hours later.
Folks, people will bet on anything. There are likely hundreds of thousands standing by wanting to make a bet on something, but in the United States your options currently (Sun-Tue 5pm) are nil. Your options are on events like ping-pong in China. Perhaps darts, cricket or rugby if you’re lucky. The money bet on events like this is amazing and therefore Magic City is giving it a try. Go to the Betrivers website and see for yourself. And yes, jai-alai is a sport they are promoting. Magic City has realized that pari-mutual wagering in jai-alai will never be profitable. Even if they are the only game in town – or shall we say in the United States.
I do have an idea, Magic City. Keep the pari-mutual wagering going if you can. How about running it after the 5pm H2H games and start at 7:30 or 8pm? You would reach a lot of more people at those hours.
As we have noted before, the court has been stained black and it looks good. Special thanks to Kyle Kubala for the photos.
