Legal Sports Betting in the United States

Whether you can legally bet on sports depends entirely on the state you are physically located in, not the state you live in. After the Supreme Court returned the decision to the states in 2018, each one set its own rules. Today there are four broad categories:

• Legal online states: Download a licensed app and bet from anywhere inside state lines. This covers 31 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico.
• Retail-only or tribal-only states: Betting is legal but you must wager in person at a casino, sportsbook or lottery terminal. This covers eight states.
• No legal betting: There are no licensed sportsbooks of any kind. This covers 11 states.
• Pending: Several no-betting states have active bills or ballot measures that could change their status soon.

If your state has legal online betting, you should always use a state-licensed sportsbook. These operators are regulated, audited and required to protect your funds. The detailed breakdown for all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico is in the state-by-state tracker further down this page. The sections immediately below explain how regulated sportsbooks work and compare the major operators.

How State Regulation Works and Why It Keeps You Safe

A regulated sportsbook is one that holds a license from a state gaming authority and operates under that state’s laws. Every legal betting state has a regulator, such as the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, the Michigan Gaming Control Board or the Colorado Division of Gaming. Before an operator can take a single bet, it must apply for a license, pass background and financial checks, pay licensing fees and meet technical standards for security and fairness.

That oversight is what separates a legal sportsbook from an offshore one. Regulated operators must keep customer funds separated from operating money, verify that bettors are of legal age and physically inside the state through geolocation technology, offer responsible gambling tools such as deposit limits and self-exclusion, and submit to regular audits. If a regulated operator treats you unfairly, you have a state regulator to complain to and a legal framework that backs you up. When you bet with a licensed book, your deposits, your winnings and your personal information all sit inside a protected system.

Regulated operators also report their numbers publicly. Almost every legal state publishes monthly figures on total amount wagered, revenue and taxes paid, which is why the market data in this guide is reliable. That transparency does not exist in the offshore world.

What “Offshore” and “Unregulated” Mean

Offshore sportsbooks are betting sites that operate from outside the United States, typically licensed in jurisdictions such as Curacao, the Union of the Comoros or Panama. They accept American customers, but they are not licensed or regulated by any U.S. state. That is the single most important thing to understand about them: when you bet at an offshore site, you are outside the U.S. regulatory system entirely. There is no state regulator overseeing the operator, no requirement that your funds be protected, and no U.S. legal framework backing you if something goes wrong.

This guide is built around legal, regulated betting, and we want to be direct about the distinction. Offshore books are not legal, state-licensed operators. They are not audited by U.S. regulators. They are not the same as DraftKings, FanDuel or any of the books in the regulated section above, even though their websites can look similar.

The Risks Compared With Regulated Books

The main risk is simple: if an offshore operator holds your money and then goes out of business, leaves your state, or simply declines to pay, you have very little recourse. There is no state regulator to file a complaint with and no realistic legal path to recover funds. Offshore books are also frequently the target of enforcement action. During 2026, several states moved against them. Michigan’s gaming regulator issued cease-and-desist orders to 45 illegal offshore operators in April 2026, with BetOnline and SportsBetting.ag among those named. Tennessee fined Bovada 50,000 dollars as part of a broader crackdown. Massachusetts and Arizona regulators sent cease-and-desist letters to offshore books as well. As a result, Bovada has been pushed out of more than a dozen states, blocking new sign-ups and access in those markets.

When a book retreats from a state, the bettors left behind are the ones who deal with the fallout: geo-blocked accounts, balances they cannot reach and withdrawal requests that go unanswered. Other common complaints about offshore books include uncompetitive odds, slower payouts outside of cryptocurrency, and limited customer support.

Who Should Consider an Offshore Book at All

To be clear about our position: if you live in a state with legal online sports betting, there is no good reason to use an offshore site. You give up every consumer protection that a regulated operator provides, and you do it for no real benefit. Always use a state-licensed book when one is available to you.

The only people who realistically turn to offshore books are bettors in states that have no legal online option at all, such as California, Texas or Georgia. Even then, it is essential to understand that these sites are unregulated and that using them carries the risks described above. If you are in that situation and choose to use one anyway, treat the reviews below as a comparison of unregulated options, not an endorsement, and consider regulated alternatives such as social or sweepstakes sportsbooks where they are available in your state.

Mobile betting now accounts for the large majority of all legal wagering in the country. In most legal states, you can register, deposit and bet entirely from your phone, as long as you are physically inside state lines. Sportsbook apps use geolocation to confirm your location every time you place a bet, which is why you cannot wager while traveling through a state where betting is not legal.

Where Mobile Betting Is Legal vs. Retail-Only

Statewide mobile betting is available in 31 states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. A separate group of states has legal betting but no statewide app: Mississippi allows mobile wagering only while you are on the premises of a licensed casino; Montana runs betting through state lottery terminals and an app that works only at authorized locations; and Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota limit betting to in-person locations, mostly tribal or casino venues. Washington and Wisconsin permit app-based betting but only on or near tribal land, not statewide. Several states are also online-only with no retail sportsbooks at all, including Tennessee, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Wyoming.

Best Mobile Sports Betting Apps by Rating

The table below ranks the leading regulated apps using general app-store rating ranges. Ratings shift over time and differ slightly between Apple and Android, so treat these as a guide rather than an exact score.

States With Legal Sports Betting

The following 39 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, have legal sports betting in some form, whether online, retail or tribal: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

States With Legal Betting but No Statewide Online Option

These states allow betting but restrict it to in-person, tribal or on-premises wagering, with no statewide mobile app for the general public: Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin. Wisconsin signed an online betting law in April 2026 that grants its tribes exclusive mobile rights, but a public statewide launch had not yet occurred as of this update.

States With No Legal Sports Betting

The following 11 states have no legal sports betting of any kind: Alabama, Alaska, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Minnesota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. Minnesota has passed and debated legislation but has not launched, while Utah and Idaho remain among the least likely states to ever legalize because of constitutional and cultural barriers.

States Working on Sports Betting Laws

Several no-betting states have active or recurring efforts to legalize. Georgia, Minnesota, Texas, South Carolina and Alabama are generally seen as the most likely to move within the next few years, though each faces hurdles such as required constitutional amendments, tribal negotiations or legislative opposition. Oklahoma came close in 2026 before a Senate vote ended the effort for the year. The pending-legislation column in the tracker below has the current status for each state.

Federal Status: PASPA and Murphy v. NCAA

From 1992 until 2018, a federal law called the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, or PASPA, effectively banned sports betting across most of the country. It barred states from authorizing sports wagering, with a handful of exceptions, most notably Nevada. New Jersey challenged the law, arguing that the federal government could not force states to keep their own anti-betting laws on the books. In May 2018, the Supreme Court agreed. In Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, the court ruled 6 to 3 that PASPA was unconstitutional, returning the decision on whether to legalize sports betting to each individual state. That ruling is the foundation of everything on this page. Within months, states began passing their own laws, and the modern legal market was born.

The Wire Act

The Wire Act of 1961 is an older federal law that prohibits using wire communications to transmit certain bets across state lines. For years there was debate about how broadly it applied to online gambling. The practical effect today is that legal sportsbooks must keep betting activity contained within the borders of a state that has legalized it. This is why operators use geolocation to confirm you are inside state lines, and why you cannot legally place an online bet across state borders even between two legal states. Hopefully people will see how successful legal sports betting has been and let other forms of online gambling to expand as well.

State vs. Federal Authority

After Murphy v. NCAA, authority over sports betting sits primarily with the states. Each state decides whether to legalize, how to tax, who can be licensed, what the legal age is and which bets are allowed. This is why the rules differ so much from one state to the next, and why tax rates range from roughly 6.5 percent to more than 50 percent depending on the state. There is currently no national sports betting law or regulator. A federal proposal known as the SAFE Bet Act has been introduced to address advertising, affordability and certain prop bets, but it has not become law.

Tribal Gaming and Compacts

Native American tribes play a central role in the legal sports betting market. Under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, tribes negotiate gaming compacts with states that can include sports betting. In several states, tribal casinos are the only legal place to bet. In Florida, the Seminole Tribe holds exclusive online and retail rights through its compact, which is why Hard Rock Bet is the sole legal operator there. In Arizona, Connecticut and Michigan, tribal partnerships sit alongside commercial operators. In Washington and Wisconsin, betting is limited to tribal land. Because tribes are sovereign, these compacts often shape where and how betting expands, and tribal negotiations are frequently the deciding factor in states such as California, Minnesota and Oklahoma.

Legal vs. Offshore or Unregulated Betting

The clearest way to understand the difference is by who stands behind your money. A legal, regulated sportsbook holds a state license, is audited, must protect your funds and answers to a state regulator. An offshore or unregulated book holds a foreign license, answers to no U.S. authority, and offers no guaranteed protection if it fails to pay or shuts down. Both can look like polished betting sites, but only one operates inside the system of rules designed to protect you. When a legal option exists in your state, it is always the safer choice.

Timeline of Legal Online Sports Betting

The list below shows when online sports betting launched in each state after the 2018 ruling, in chronological order.

A newer wrinkle in the legal conversation is the rise of prediction-market platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, which let users trade on the outcomes of events, including some sports outcomes. These operate under a different federal framework than state-regulated sportsbooks, and their legal status is being actively debated. Several states, including Texas, have begun studying them, and some regulators have pushed back. They are not the same as licensed sportsbooks, and the rules around them are still taking shape. We mention them here because any complete picture of U.S. betting in 2026 has to account for them, and we will expand this section as the legal questions are resolved.

The Market’s Growth Since 2021

The chart below shows how quickly the legal market has expanded. Total handle, the amount Americans wager, and gross revenue, what sportsbooks keep after paying winners, have both climbed every single year.

This guide is reviewed and updated as states pass new laws, as sportsbooks launch or leave markets, and as regulators take action. State counts, launch dates, regulators and legal ages are drawn from official state gaming authorities and reputable industry trackers, and are cross-checked when sources disagree. Operator state counts and app ratings are approximate and shift over time. Promotional offers change frequently and always carry terms and conditions; confirm the current offer with the operator before signing up.