Is Sports Betting Legal in Maryland? Yes, 11 Apps and No Signup Trip

Yes. Sports betting is legal in Maryland both in person and on your phone, for anyone 21 or older. Eleven mobile sportsbooks are live as of July 2026, eleven venues take bets in person, and there is no in-person signup step anywhere in the process. You can open an account and place a bet from your couch in minutes. The state takes 20% of mobile revenue, and most of that money goes to K-12 education.

Maryland also happens to be the state where the biggest unresolved question in American gambling law might get answered. A federal appeals court in Richmond has been sitting on the prediction-market case since May 2026, and because the district judge ruled for Maryland, a decision upholding him would be the first appeals-court ruling in the country to conflict with the one that went the other way.

Quick facts

Two launch dates, a year apart

Maryland voters approved sports betting in a 2020 ballot referendum, with 67.1% in favor. The legislature passed the implementing law the following year. Then something unusual happened: retail betting opened at MGM National Harbor on December 9, 2021, and mobile betting did not arrive until November 23, 2022, when seven apps went live at 9:00 in the morning.

That gap is 11 months and 14 days, and the reason is more specific than the version you usually read.

The delay was written into the statute. Maryland created a separate body to hand out the competitive licenses, the Sports Wagering Application Review Commission, universally shortened to SWARC, and the law barred SWARC from awarding any mobile license until it first adopted a set of regulations. Those regulations were required to rest on a study of who actually participates in the industry. The study came back in 2022 with an awkward answer: the state’s existing disparity research supported applying Maryland’s general minority business program to sports wagering, but the reviewing economist would not say it justified a sports-betting-specific racial or gender preference.

So SWARC did not create one. What it wrote instead was a wealth ceiling. Applicants had to show that at least 5% of their ownership was held by individuals each worth less than about $1.85 million. Race and gender survived only as softer evaluation criteria, including whether an applicant made good-faith efforts to attract minority and women investors. The regulations took effect in the autumn of 2022, and ten mobile licenses were awarded on November 16.

It is worth being precise about this because the shorthand version, that a diversity mandate held up betting in Maryland, gets the mechanism wrong. The hold-up was a statutory sequencing lock, and the rule it produced was about net worth rather than race.

Who you can bet with

Eleven mobile sportsbooks are live as of July 18, 2026. That is our count, and it deserves a footnote, because the regulator’s own June data file shows twelve. Crab Sports, a Maryland-based book, paused all wagering on July 12, 2026 after announcing the decision in June. It still appears in the June numbers with about $172,000 of handle, so a list built from the last published file will be one operator out of date.

The national brands are all here, and Maryland is a genuinely competitive market rather than one where two apps take almost everything.

The retail side is the odd part, and it is the most Maryland thing about the market. Eleven venues take bets in person, and only six of them are casinos. The rest include two off-track betting parlors, a sports bar, an NFL stadium, and a bingo hall in Brooklyn Park, which happens to be the licensee that launched BetRivers in the state. If you have read our apps page and assumed sports betting licenses only go to casinos, Maryland is the counterexample.

The tax, and where it actually goes

Maryland taxes mobile betting at 20% and retail at 15%. The mobile rate went up from 15% in 2025, in a budget bill signed by Governor Wes Moore.

Be careful with the comparison here, because it is the same trap we flagged on Pennsylvania and Illinois: the 20% figure applies to mobile only, so a straight comparison with a state that has one blended rate is not like for like.

The destination is unusually specific. Of the mobile tax, three quarters goes to the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future Fund, the state’s long-term K-12 education program, and the remaining quarter to the general fund. All of the retail tax goes to the education fund. So the “betting pays for schools” line that many states use loosely is, in Maryland, written into the statute with a formula attached.

What you can and cannot bet

College betting is broadly open in Maryland, with one significant exception.

You can bet Maryland college teams. The Terrapins, Navy, Towson and Johns Hopkins are all on the board, and the Army-Navy game and the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy are expressly approved markets. Maryland has neither the rule that New Jersey uses, which bars any college game played in the state, nor the one New York uses, which bars games involving in-state teams.

What you cannot bet is an individual college athlete. Player props on college sports were pulled from the state’s approved wagering catalog effective March 1, 2024, which is the same moment several other states acted at the NCAA’s request.

Here is the detail nobody else writes, and it matters if you care about how durable a rule is: that ban is not in Maryland’s regulations. It lives in the regulator’s approved catalog, a list of permitted markets, rather than in the code. A bill to write it into statute (HB 518) passed the Maryland House unanimously, 132 to 0, then cleared the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee and passed second reading on the Senate floor, and still died on the session’s final day, April 13, 2026, without ever getting a vote on final passage. So the prohibition is real and currently enforced, but it rests on an administrative list rather than a law.

Maryland went further in 2026. Effective March 1 of this year, the regulator also removed a cluster of college basketball markets: first-half spreads, first-half moneylines and first-half unders for men, first-quarter equivalents for women, along with first-scoring-play and first-team-to-reach-a-score bets. Two postseason tournaments were delisted entirely. The reasoning tracks the integrity concern that a single player or a single early possession can swing those markets.

On consumer rules Maryland sits on the permissive side. Credit card deposits are allowed for online betting, which is the opposite of what Colorado did in 2026 when it banned them. And unlike Massachusetts, Maryland has no rule requiring a sportsbook to explain itself when it limits a winning bettor. It does ban “risk-free” advertising language, which Massachusetts also does.

The Kalshi case that could split the courts

This is why Maryland matters beyond its own borders.

On April 7, 2025, the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Commission sent identical cease-and-desist letters to three prediction-market platforms: Kalshi, Robinhood and Crypto.com. Two of them complied. Robinhood still blocks Maryland residents from event contracts today. Crypto.com pulled its sports contracts out of the state in December 2025.

Kalshi refused and sued. It lost. On August 1, 2025, Judge Adam Abelson denied Kalshi’s request for a preliminary injunction, holding it had not shown a likelihood of success on its argument that federal commodities law overrides Maryland gambling law. The court’s reasoning leaned on history: the Wire Act and the federal sports betting ban were both in force when Congress wrote and amended the commodities statute, and states could not legalize sports betting at all until 2018, so Congress was unlikely to have intended to sweep state gambling law aside. Note the ruling was narrow in one respect: having found no likelihood of success, the judge did not reach the other three factors courts weigh.

Kalshi appealed. The Fourth Circuit heard argument on May 7, 2026 before Judges Gregory, Thacker and Benjamin, on the question of whether the Commodity Exchange Act preempts Maryland’s gambling laws as applied to sports event contracts. As of July 18, 2026 there is no decision.

Two points of precision, because this case is widely described loosely.

First, “Kalshi v. Maryland” is shorthand. The case is KalshiEX LLC v. Martin, and the State of Maryland is not a named party. Kalshi is the plaintiff below and the appellant above; Maryland never sued anyone.

Second, Kalshi still operates in Maryland, and not because a court allowed it. The cease-and-desist is still outstanding, and Kalshi remains on the state’s published list of illegal operators. What is keeping enforcement paused is a written assurance from the state’s own lawyers, given in August 2025, that they would hold off while the appeal is pending. That is a private agreement between parties, not a court order, and it is a very different thing from Michigan’s geofence deadline with a daily fine attached. It also expires on its own terms when the Fourth Circuit rules.

For the national picture: only one federal appeals court has ruled on this question so far, and it sided with Kalshi. Maryland’s district judge went the other way. If the Fourth Circuit affirms him, that would be the first genuine split between appeals courts, which is usually what it takes to get the Supreme Court’s attention. Maryland is not one of the nine states the federal government has sued over prediction markets.

No online casino, and the reason is structural

Maryland has legal sports betting, legal casinos and legal online sports betting, but no legal online casino, even though Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and West Virginia all border it and all have one.

The obstacle is constitutional rather than political. Expanding commercial gambling in Maryland requires a statewide voter referendum at a general election. That is why sports betting itself went to the ballot in 2020. An online casino bill would have to clear both chambers in time to put the question to voters, and it has failed four years running, in 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. It has never received a floor vote in the Senate.

Because the 2026 session ended without a referendum bill, and referendums run with general elections, the earliest Maryland voters could decide the question is November 2028. That is a chain of requirements rather than a prediction, and nobody credible has forecast the outcome.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to sign up in person in Maryland? No. Maryland is fully remote, unlike Nevada, where you have to show ID in person before your first bet, and Washington, where the app only works inside a tribal casino.

Can I bet on the Terrapins? Yes, at team level, along with Navy, Towson and Johns Hopkins. What you cannot bet is a prop on an individual college player.

How old do I have to be? 21, statewide, with no exceptions.

Is Kalshi legal in Maryland? Contested. Maryland ordered it to stop in April 2025 and it is still on the state’s illegal-operator list, but enforcement is paused by agreement while the Fourth Circuit decides the appeal.

Will Maryland get online casinos? Not before November 2028 at the earliest, because it needs a voter referendum and no bill has ever reached a Senate floor vote.