Betting in Washington DC

For a jurisdiction with fewer than a million residents, DC now hosts an outsized roster of mobile books. Between the lottery-backed FanDuel app and privately licensed books like Caesars, BetMGM, Fanatics, and others, DC residents have access to more names than some full states with far bigger populations.

That puts DC in an odd but favorable spot for bettors: it’s a small market with more real mobile choice than states like Delaware or single-operator states. You get multiple national brands competing on pricing, promos, and product.

DC used to be a weird patchwork: a clunky lottery-run app - GambetDC - plus a few geofenced commercial books that only worked within a two-block radius of their arenas. That changed with the FY2025 budget overhaul, which opened the door to a true multi-operator mobile market and brought in major brands like BetMGM, Caesars, DraftKings and Fanatics alongside FanDuel.

What makes DC hybrid now isn’t geofencing, it’s governance. The Office of Lottery and Gaming still sits at the center of the system, but commercial operators can now apply for district-wide mobile licenses rather than being locked to tiny footprints around stadiums.

The result is a market that finally behaves like a normal multi-book state on the phone, but still runs through DC’s lottery-driven framework instead of a traditional state gaming commission.

DC started with a relatively modest 10% tax on online sports betting revenue, then cranked it up to 30% on most online betting as of August 1, 2024.

That’s a huge jump, and it matters. At 30%, DC now sits closer to high-pressure environments like New York than to mid-tier markets in the Midwest.

High tax rates don’t automatically kill a market, but they do tighten margins - which usually means less aggressive promo cycles over time, more conservative pricing, and operators focusing harder on profitability than on acquisition. In a jurisdiction as small as DC, that pressure is amplified.

DC allows betting on most college sports, but draws a hard line around its own backyard. Wagers on DC-based college teams like Georgetown or on any collegiate events held within District limits are off the board.

It’s a similar philosophy to what you see in places like New Jersey and Virginia, where lawmakers decided local college programs were too close to home to be part of the betting menu.

Practically, it means college hoops bettors in DC have to look out-of-market for action - plenty of games, just not the ones played in their own gyms.

Daily fantasy sports run cleanly in Washington, DC, with both traditional salary-cap contests and pick ’em–style formats available from major operators.

For players, that means you’ve got more than one lane to work with. If you like drafting full lineups and grinding contests against other players, the traditional DFS apps cover that. If you prefer something closer to a parlay card - building slips around player stat lines and stacking legs for bigger payouts - the Pick ’Em products fill that gap without needing a sportsbook account.

In a small but crowded betting market like DC, DFS and Pick ’Em effectively act as overflow valves: they give you more flexibility in how you play, more ways to target edges on player performance, and a legal alternative when you don’t want to run everything through a standard sportsbook interface.

DC does not have a regulated iGaming framework. There are no licensed real-money online casinos offering slots, blackjack, or live-dealer tables under District law.

What DC residents do have is access to sweepstakes-style casinos that operate under federal and state sweepstakes law rather than gambling statutes. These platforms use dual-currency systems - one for play, one redeemable for cash prizes - and are generally treated as legal across most of the U.S., because they’re structured as promotional sweepstakes rather than traditional gambling.

For players, that means you can get a casino-style experience online, but it’s going to be via a sweeps model, not a locally licensed online casino.

DC sportsbooks are barred from taking bets on elections, award shows, or broader cultural and economic outcomes. The rules are limited to sporting events, and regulators have been clear about avoiding non-sports wagering.

Prediction markets, however, sit under a different regime. Platforms that operate under federal commodities law via the CFTC can offer trading on elections, macroeconomic indicators, and other real-world outcomes that DC sportsbooks can’t touch.

That gives District residents a split-lane system: traditional books for sports, and federally regulated markets if they want to speculate on politics, inflation prints, Fed moves, or bigger-picture events.