Where Is Sports Betting Legal in the US?

Sports betting is legal in 39 states and the District of Columbia, according to the American Gaming Association's State of the States 2026 report, whose data runs to December 31, 2025. When we checked on September 27, 2026, we found no report of a new state market launching in 2026. In 11 states there is no legal sports betting of any kind: Alabama, Alaska, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Minnesota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.

"Legal" hides a big split, though. Tallying the AGA's own state table, 31 of those 39 states, plus DC, allow betting on a phone from anywhere inside the state. The other eight limit you to a sportsbook counter, or to an app that only works on a casino's premises. Where you can bet decides what you can bet, how you pay, and who you complain to when something goes wrong.

This is a general explainer, not legal advice. Laws change; check your state regulator before you rely on any of it.

What did Murphy v. NCAA actually decide?

Until 2018 a federal law, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, stopped states from getting into sports betting. PASPA was enacted on October 28, 1992. Its trick was that it never made betting itself a federal crime. It made it unlawful for a state to "sponsor, operate, advertise, promote, license, or authorize by law or compact" a sports betting scheme, and it let the Attorney General and the sports leagues sue to stop one. Grandfather clauses spared four states that already had some form of sports wagering, which left Nevada as the only place with full casino sportsbooks.

New Jersey went at the law twice. Its 2014 statute didn't license anything; it simply repealed the state's own prohibitions for bets placed at Atlantic City casinos and racetracks. The NCAA and the major leagues sued, and won in the lower courts.

The Supreme Court reversed on May 14, 2018, in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, No. 16-476. Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the Court. The holding turns on the anticommandeering doctrine: Congress may regulate people directly, but it cannot issue orders to state legislatures. A ban on states "authorizing" sports betting is exactly that kind of order, and the Court said there is no meaningful difference between forcing a state to pass a law and forbidding it to repeal one. It then held that none of PASPA's remaining provisions could be severed, so the whole statute fell.

The sentence that matters most for everything since: "Congress can regulate sports gambling directly, but if it elects not to do so, each State is free to act on its own."

Three things follow from that sentence.

• Murphy did not legalize anything. It removed a federal barrier. Each state still had to pass its own law, write rules and license operators. That is why the map filled in state by state, over seven years, and is still not finished.
• There is no national sports betting license. A book licensed in New Jersey has no right to take a bet from someone in Pennsylvania. It needs a separate license there.
• Congress kept the power to act. It hasn't passed a federal sports betting framework, so the state patchwork is the system.

Which states have online betting, which are retail only, and which have none?

The AGA table classifies each legal state's mobile betting as statewide, on-property only, or not permitted. As of its December 31, 2025 snapshot:

Tier	Count	States
Statewide online/mobile	31 + DC	Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida (tribal only), Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming
Mobile only on a licensed property	5	Mississippi, Montana, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin
Retail only, no mobile	3	Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota
No legal sports betting	11	Alabama, Alaska, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Minnesota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah

Add it up: 31 + 5 + 3 = 39 legal states, and 39 + 11 = 50. Missouri was the most recent launch, going live on December 1, 2025. The AGA notes that no new state passed a sports wagering law during 2025.

Two caveats on the table. First, "statewide" doesn't mean the market is open to anyone who wants a license. In some states a single operator or the tribes hold the whole market. Florida is the clearest case: the AGA lists its mobile betting as statewide but tribal only. Second, the table is a snapshot, not a live feed.

What has changed since the snapshot. On April 9, 2026, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed AB-601, which allows statewide online betting as long as the wagers are run by the state's tribes and processed on servers on tribal land. It is not live. A tribe that wants to offer it has to renegotiate its gaming compact with the state and get the amendment approved by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs first, and we found no launch date as of September 27, 2026. Until it launches, Wisconsin stays in the on-property row above.

What is the practical difference between online and retail?

At a retail sportsbook you walk up to a counter or a kiosk inside a casino, racetrack or arena, and hand over cash for a paper ticket. The trade-off is obvious: you bet only when you are physically there, and you can't compare prices across five books from your couch.

Online betting is where nearly all the volume is. The AGA's Arizona profile is a good illustration: mobile betting made up about 99.5% of the state's 2025 sports betting revenue. To bet online legally, three things have to be true at the moment you place the bet.

1. You are physically inside the state. Not a resident — present. A New Yorker visiting New Jersey can bet on a New Jersey app; a New Jerseyan in Manhattan cannot bet on that same app until they cross back. The legal reason is federal. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act exempts online bets only when they are "initiated and received or otherwise made exclusively within a single State," and only when that state's law includes age and location verification. We explain how books check this in how sportsbook geolocation works.
2. You have a verified account. Name, date of birth, usually part of your Social Security number, checked against third-party databases before you can deposit.
3. You meet the age limit. Each state sets its own; New Jersey's online rules, for example, require operators to verify that a patron is 21.

"On-property mobile," the middle row of the table, is a hybrid. You use an app on your phone, but it only lets you bet inside the casino's geofence. In practice it is a retail market with a nicer screen.

How do I tell whether a sportsbook is legal where I am?

Every legal state publishes the list of operators it has licensed. If a site takes your bet but doesn't appear on your state regulator's list, it isn't a licensed sportsbook in your state, whatever its homepage says. The two usual impostors are offshore books and sweepstakes apps. Each has its own guide in this series: offshore sportsbooks and sweepstakes sportsbooks.

Prediction markets such as Kalshi are a separate case. They run under federal commodities law rather than state gaming licenses. Whether states can regulate them is being fought in the federal appeals courts right now, and as of September 27, 2026 the circuits disagree. We lay out that fight in prediction markets vs sportsbooks.

What would change this map?

A state legislature can add itself at any session. Wisconsin's April law shows one way a tribal-gaming state has done it: the tribes run the product. In the other direction, Congress could legislate directly, which Murphy expressly allows. It hasn't.

If you are new to the vocabulary of the market itself — moneylines, spreads, what the odds mean — start with the Academy's sports betting basics lesson. For a plain map of the kinds of sites you will run into, see types of betting sites.

Checked September 27, 2026. We will update this page when a state launches or a court changes the picture.