Baseball is not only one of the most popular sports in the United States, but it’s also had a significant impact on the culture. Baseball even used to be an Olympic sport, but it was removed because only one country would win a medal every four years. Many people have been asking themselves whether or not it’s legal to bet on Baseball in the United States. The short answer to that question is that yes, it is legal to bet on Baseball. You have to find the right sportsbook that will accept Americans. Only a few of the fifty states allow sports betting, but the most prominent place to do it is Nevada. States such as Colorado or Oregon may enable sports betting, but when it comes to betting options, they don’t offer much.
Betting on Baseball: Where is it legal?
The best option is to find an off-shore site to bet with. An off-shore site is a website that isn’t located in the US, and thus it can’t be subjected to America’s anti-gambling restrictions. There are no direct laws that prohibit you from betting on an off-shore site, so yes, it’s legal to bet there. The illegal part is if those sites set up shop within the US, but as long as that doesn’t happen, everything will stay above the border.
You can see the official list of all the states that baseball betting is legal/or on the way represented in the table below:
| In-person and online betting is legal | Land-based sportsbook only (no online betting) | Legislation passed but no current implementations/coming soon |
| Nevada | New York | Montana |
| Oregon | Delaware | Colorado |
| Iowa | North Carolina | Illinois |
| Pennsylvania | Mississippi | Michigan |
| West Virginia | Arkansas | Tennessee |
| Indiana | New Mexico | |
| New Hampshire | ||
| Rhode Island | ||
| New Jersey |
If you live in a state where online sports betting isn’t legal for now, we recommend that you stay away from off-shore betting sites. The next few years will be groundbreaking and full of new legislations and laws, so wait it out and see if your state will make it to the list.
If you still want to try out betting legally, but your state hasn’t yet decided on online sports betting, you can try out DFS (Daily Fantasy Sports). If you don’t know what that let me try to explain. You may have heard or played one of those office leagues in the past, and the basic idea is similar with one key difference – the contests last for only a single day. You have to draft a team, earn points based on real-world execution in games, and if you outscore the competition, you earn real money. The most prevalent sites for DFS are:
- FanDuel
- DraftKings
Both alternatives award millions of dollars each year in baseball contests, and they even operate their sportsbooks. You will have to check out their websites to be sure if they operate in your state, and if you are lucky you may start betting and if not you can still try out the Daily Fantasy Sports section of their operations where your fictional team may end up winning in the daily contests.