Column: Seminole Tribe a big player in gaming with Hard Rock

I, like many, thought we left Hard Rock and its shrunken T’s and guitar pins back in the ’80s, along with Molly Ringwald and Rick Springfield. But apparently the brand is bigger and better than ever, thanks to an unlikely business partner: the Seminole Tribe of Florida.

The tribe has been a key player in Indian gaming after it sued to keep its high-stakes bingo hall open. The Seminoles’ suit was headed to the US Supreme Court when a similar case was decided. The landmark ruling declared that states could not enforce gaming prohibitions on Indian tribes. That decision paved the way for the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988, allowing tribes to open casinos.

The Seminoles developed the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on reservation land just outside of Fort Lauderdale in 2004, under a licensing agreement with the British company Rank Group. Around the same time, the tribe expanded its Tampa casino under the Hard Rock brand.

Buoyed by huge profits from those two casinos, the Seminoles bought the entire Hard Rock chain from Rank for $965 million in 2007. It was a big deal, the first time an Indian tribe had bought a major international company.

Since the acquisition, the Seminoles have opened three more Hard Rock casinos in Biloxi, Miss., the Dominican Republic, and Macau. One more will debut in Ohio in December, and another is planned in Hungary.