Betting in Texas

In Texas, the choke point isn’t just politics - it’s the constitution. Article III, Section 47 requires the Legislature to prohibit lotteries and “gift enterprises”, and that language has been interpreted for decades as a broad anti-gambling mandate.

Every major form of legal wagering Texans know today - the state lottery, charitable bingo, charitable raffles, and pari-mutuel horse racing - exists only because voters approved specific constitutional amendments carving out exceptions.

Sports betting and commercial casinos don’t have that carveout. To bring them in cleanly, lawmakers typically assume they need a two-thirds vote in both chambers to place an amendment on the ballot (like HJR 102 in 2023), and then a statewide majority at the polls.

For bettors, that’s the real hurdle: you’re not just waiting on a bill - you’re waiting on a full constitutional change.

The closest Texas has come to legalizing sports betting was in 2023, when HB 1942 (paired with a constitutional amendment) cleared the House with room to spare. The bill would have created a mobile sports betting framework built around pro teams and major operators.

It never even got a real look in the Senate. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick publicly said the bill wouldn’t be referred because it lacked strong Republican support, and made it clear he wouldn’t spend floor time on sports betting without a solid GOP majority behind it.

In practical terms, that means the roadblock isn’t voter appetite - it’s Senate leadership.

On a map, Texas looks like a big blank stretch of no sports betting. On the ground, it’s ringed by access. Louisiana and Arkansas offer legal retail and online sportsbooks, while Oklahoma and New Mexico have more limited, tribal-driven retail options.

For a lot of Texans, the “local” sportsbook is just across a state line - a weekend trip to Shreveport or Lake Charles, or a drive into Arkansas.

Policy groups and local reporting routinely note that thousands of Texans cross those borders every year, and some estimates peg the total gambling spend leaving Texas for Oklahoma and Louisiana alone in the $2.2–3 billion per year range.

From Austin’s perspective, that’s the core trade-off: Texas keeps its prohibitionist stance, but it exports both the handle and the tax base to every border state that’s willing to take it.

Prediction markets such as Kalshi operate under federal commodities law as CFTC-regulated event-contract markets, not as Texas-licensed sportsbooks. That’s why Texans can legally trade yes/no contracts on everything from sports-adjacent outcomes to elections, economic reports, and other real-world events, even though the state bans traditional sports betting.

The structure is simple: you buy contracts priced between $0 and $1 on whether an event will happen. If you’re right, they settle at $1; if you’re wrong, they go to $0.

For Texans who want real-money exposure without crossing state lines - prediction markets are one of the cleanest legally recognized alternatives.

In 2016, Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion saying that paid daily fantasy contests where the operator takes a cut look like illegal gambling under Texas law. The opinion isn’t a statute and doesn’t carry automatic enforcement power, but it put a cloud over DFS in the state.

Operators responded in different ways, but the practical outcome for players is straightforward: major DFS platforms still serve Texas, traditional salary-cap contests are widely available, and Pick ’Em-style formats continue to run on a “skill-game” theory that hasn’t been seriously tested in court.

For Texans, DFS is a real, usable option - just one that sits in a gray zone rather than on clean statutory footing.

Because traditional online casinos and sportsbooks are illegal in Texas, sweepstakes casinos and social-style sportsbooks have become the de facto online alternative.

These platforms use a dual-currency system - one set of virtual coins for regular play, and a separate “sweeps” balance that can be redeemed for cash or prizes - to fit within sweepstakes and promotional law rather than the state’s gambling bans.

From a player’s perspective, they look and feel just like online casinos or sportsbooks: slots, table-style games, and sport picks with real-money outcomes on the back end. From a legal perspective, they’ve flourished precisely because Texas has never authorized a regulated markets, leaving sweepstakes workarounds as the only widely accessible way to get a sports & casino-style betting experience from a phone.

Because Texas doesn’t have licensed sportsbooks, offshore sites lean hard into the vacuum with ads and search results that make them look like normal U.S. books. They’re not. They’re based overseas, hold no Texas license, and aren’t regulated anywhere in the U.S.

If one of these sites delays or denies a payout, changes its rules after you’ve bet, or freezes your account, there’s no Texas regulator to call and no formal dispute process to rely on.

In a state where you have lawful alternatives - DFS, sweepstakes platforms, and federally supervised prediction markets - sending your bankroll offshore piles on risk without adding any meaningful protection.