Miami Herald: “The night he won his seventh Super Bowl, Tom Brady partied maskless aboard the superyacht of his friend, South Florida billionaire real estate mogul Jeffrey Soffer. Floating off the coast of Tampa on Feb. 7, Brady celebrated at an after party with longtime friends and associates – and some new ones, too. One was Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls, a Palm Harbor Republican who approached the Super Bowl MVP to congratulate him on leading the home team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to their first trophy since 2003.”

“It wasn’t the first time Sprowls had met Brady on Soffer’s 311-foot Madsummer, a state-of-the-art vessel roughly as long as a football field. Five months earlier, Soffer had hosted a fundraiser and dinner for Sprowls on the boat and introduced him to Brady and his wife, Gisele Bündchen. Soffer used that opportunity to make a pitch. Details were offered behind closed doors, but the idea was simple: Pass legislation to allow Soffer to move a gambling permit from his Hallandale Beach-based Big Easy Casino to the sumptuous Fontainebleau Resort in Miami Beach, which his family has owned since 2005. The effort to bring gaming to the Beach had been a decade-long ‘obsession’ of Soffer’s, those who know him have said. But, because of Florida’s fraught history with gambling, the strong opposition from local politicians, and the super-sized influence of the Seminole Tribe’s South Florida gaming presence, his efforts had failed.”