Betting in California

California isn’t a betting holdout because it lacks gambling. It’s a holdout because it has too much of it - and too many powerful interests with incompatible definitions of “legal,” “fair,” and “who gets to run the show.” 

Most states legalize sports betting by building on whatever gaming structure already exists. California already has multiple structures, each with its own history, politics, and economic gravity. That’s why sports betting hasn’t arrived here. The fight isn’t about demand - it’s about control.

You could see that plainly in 2022. Two ballot measures, two different visions, and a campaign so expensive and so hostile that it made legalization feel less like a consumer product and more like a power grab. Voters didn’t just reject one plan - they rejected the entire premise that the state was ready to decide this cleanly. Proposition 26 and Proposition 27 didn’t fail because Californians don’t want to bet. They failed because the state’s stakeholders couldn’t agree on an ecosystem that protects their existing turf while creating something new.

That dynamic is why California feels so different from other non-sportsbook states. In places like Alaska, there’s nothing to build on. In California, the foundation is already occupied. 

Tribal gaming isn’t just a sector here - it’s a political force with constitutional weight, long-term compacts, and a hard-earned insistence on exclusivity in certain verticals. Card rooms have their own entrenched role and their own battles over what games they can spread. Add national sportsbook brands that want scale, and you get a market where every proposed model threatens someone’s current revenue stream.

With no clear path to legalization, “alternatives” start to matter more than they do elsewhere - and California has spent the last year showing how aggressively it’s willing to fight over them.

Sweepstakes platforms were the clearest example. For years, the dual-currency model quietly filled a gap for players who wanted casino-style games or sports picks in a state with no legal sportsbooks and no regulated online casino market. In 2025, California moved to shut that model down by passing AB 831, effectively cutting off one of the most accessible real-money workarounds Californians had been using.

DFS and Pick ’Em sit in a similar tension, just messier. They’ve been widely available for years, which is exactly why many casual players assume they’re “legal.” But California never built a clear fantasy statute the way some states did, and that ambiguity finally caught up with the industry. The Attorney General’s 2025 opinion didn’t merely raise questions - it called the core formats illegal sports wagering under state law. Operators may still be active, and they’ll argue skill, contest structure, and long-standing public operation. But bettors should understand what that really means: these games exist in California, but they’re operating with a cloud overhead, and the ground can shift quickly if enforcement tightens.

That’s what leaves prediction markets standing out. They don’t need Sacramento’s permission, because they don’t run through California’s gambling framework at all. They live under federal oversight, and they’re structured differently - closer to trading than traditional bookmaking. For Californians who want a clean real-money lane tied to sports or other real-world outcomes, that federal wrapper matters. It’s the clearest example of how people in California end up finding access: not through the state, but around it.

The big picture is simple. California has gambling, it has money, and it has players. What it doesn’t have is a unified coalition willing to trade certainty for expansion. Until that changes, California will keep behaving the way it has: no sportsbooks, hard fights over the alternatives, and a betting ecosystem where the most stable options are the ones least dependent on state approval.