Is Sports Betting Legal in Massachusetts? Yes (2026)

✓ Last verified: 2026-08-03

Yes, sports betting is legal in Massachusetts, both online and in person, for anyone 21 or older who is physically located in the state. Retail betting launched at the state’s three casinos in January 2023, and mobile apps followed about five weeks later, timed to March Madness.

Two things make Massachusetts stand out from the average legal-betting state. The first is regulation: the Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) runs one of the strictest consumer-protection regimes in the country, from a ban on the word “risk-free” in ads to a first-in-the-nation rule forcing sportsbooks to explain why they limit winning bettors. The second is an unusual college rule: you generally cannot bet on a Massachusetts college team at all, unless that team is playing in a tournament of four or more schools.

This guide covers how Massachusetts legalized betting, who you can bet with, what the 20% tax pays for, the college carve-out, the strict advertising and account rules, and where the state stands on prediction markets like Kalshi. For how Massachusetts compares with other states, see our state-by-state hub.

Quick facts

Item	Detail
Online betting since	March 10, 2023
Retail since	January 31, 2023
Minimum age	21 (daily fantasy is also 21)
Tax rate	20% online, 15% retail
Live sportsbook apps	7 as of mid-2026 (roster churns; check the MGC list)
College team betting	⚠️ In-state teams only in a tournament of 4+ schools
College player props	❌ Banned statewide, for every school
Prediction markets (Kalshi)	⚠️ State injunction won but stayed on appeal; still operating
Regulator	Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC)

How Massachusetts got here

Massachusetts legalized sports betting through Chapter 173 of the Acts of 2022, formally titled “An Act regulating sports wagering.” The bill (H.5164) cleared the legislature after a long conference-committee fight, and Governor Charlie Baker signed it on August 10, 2022, making Massachusetts the 36th state to legalize sports betting. The law is codified as Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 23N and is administered by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, the same agency that already regulated the state’s casinos.

The MGC split the rollout into two launch dates. Retail (in-person) betting went live first, on January 31, 2023, at the state’s three casinos: Encore Boston Harbor in Everett, MGM Springfield, and Plainridge Park Casino in Plainville (a staff and invitee soft launch ran the day before). Online and mobile betting followed on March 10, 2023, a date the commission settled on in early February and deliberately timed to the start of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The statute created three license categories: Category 1 for the casinos, Category 2 for racetracks and simulcast venues, and Category 3 for standalone online operators.

Who you can bet with

As of mid-2026, Massachusetts has seven licensed online sportsbooks. That is our count of the Gaming Commission’s own licensee list, and its monthly revenue report matches it, describing results across “the seven mobile/online sports wagering licensees and the three in-person licensees.” The seven are DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Caesars Sportsbook, Fanatics, theScore Bet, and Bally Bet.

Three of those hold “untethered” Category 3 licenses that do not require a casino partner: DraftKings, FanDuel, and Bally Bet. The other four are “tethered” to a casino: BetMGM (MGM Springfield), Caesars (Encore Boston Harbor), and both Fanatics and Penn Entertainment’s theScore Bet (Plainridge Park). DraftKings is the home-state operator. It is headquartered in Boston, at 222 Berkeley Street in the Back Bay, and is the largest book in the state.

Operator rosters churn, and affiliate “best sportsbook” lists are notorious for keeping dead brands on the page. In Massachusetts the traps are specific: WynnBET, Betr, and Betway have all exited, ESPN BET and Barstool are now the single theScore Bet license (Penn rebranded it on December 1, 2025), and PointsBet was absorbed into Fanatics. None of those six is a separate live operator today. bet365, which is live in many states, is not yet live here. On April 9, 2026 the MGC voted to reopen its untethered Category 3 application window after a formal request from bet365, leaving four untethered slots open. bet365 filed a letter of intent on May 22, 2026 but had not been licensed as of mid-July 2026.

The market is large and overwhelmingly online. Massachusetts sportsbooks won about $865.2 million in gross revenue in calendar 2025, up 29% year over year, and mobile accounted for $856.6 million of that against just $8.6 million from the retail counters. Bettors wagered more than $8.5 billion for the year, and November 2025 set the state’s all-time monthly handle record at roughly $914.7 million. That puts Massachusetts among the ten largest US betting markets by handle.

The tax

Massachusetts taxes online sportsbooks at 20% of their adjusted gross sports wagering receipts and retail books at 15%, set by Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 23N, Section 14. The 20% figure applies to the standalone apps and to the mobile “skins” the casinos run, because the excise is levied by mode (in person versus digital), not by which company holds the license.

That rate sits in the middle of the national pack: well above Colorado’s 10%, but far below New York’s 51%. In fiscal year 2025 (ended June 30, 2025), the state’s sportsbooks generated nearly $755 million in gross gaming revenue from about 1.83 million active accounts and paid $150.7 million in taxes. By the June 2026 monthly report, Massachusetts had collected roughly $478 million in cumulative taxes and assessments since betting began. The largest share of that money flows to the state’s General Fund, with slices earmarked for local aid, workforce training, public health, and youth sports.

The college rule

Here is the rule that trips up newcomers, and it is genuinely distinctive. You generally cannot bet on a Massachusetts college team. The one exception: you can bet that team when it is playing in a “collegiate tournament,” which Chapter 23N defines as a series of events involving four or more teams in a single unit of competition (205 CMR 247.01(2)(a)(2)).

In practice that means the NCAA Tournament (March Madness), the hockey Frozen Four, the Beanpot (the four-team Boston college hockey tournament among Boston College, Boston University, Harvard, and Northeastern), and conference tournaments of four or more teams all qualify. A regular-season game or a two-team bowl game does not. So you cannot bet a Boston College football game in October, but you can bet the Eagles once they reach a qualifying multi-team tournament. Out-of-state college teams (Alabama, Duke, and the like) are bettable at the team level year-round. Only Massachusetts teams carry the restriction.

Two more points matter. First, the tournament exception is team-level only. Even when a Massachusetts team is in March Madness, you can bet its game lines (moneyline, spread, total) but never an individual college athlete’s prop. College player props are banned statewide for every school, in-state or out, at all times (205 CMR 247.01(2)(a)(1)). Second, the MGC enforces this. In 2023 it fined all three casinos for taking illegal in-state college bets during the first weeks of betting: about $10,000 at Encore (a Boston College women’s basketball bet inside a parlay) and about $20,000 each at Plainridge Park and MGM Springfield, in two cases because the sportsbook software had mislabeled a Massachusetts school (Merrimack, Harvard) as being in another state.

Strict rules: how Massachusetts regulates

Massachusetts pairs a middle-of-the-road tax rate with an unusually aggressive consumer-protection regime, and it is the part of the market most likely to surprise bettors who came from another state.

Start with advertising. Under 205 CMR 256.00, sportsbooks may not call a promotion “free” if the customer has to risk their own money to unlock it, and they may not describe betting as “risk-free” at all. Every ad must carry a problem-gambling message and the state’s Department of Public Health helpline, and none may target people under 21 or anyone on the self-exclusion list. The MGC has publicly warned that some ads still cross the line.

The headline rule, though, is about winning bettors. On February 26, 2026 the commission voted 5-0 to become the first state in the country to force sportsbooks to explain why they limit an account. Effective June 1, 2026, an operator that restricts a bettor must notify that person within 48 hours and give a specific, personalized reason (no boilerplate), including which markets are affected. The rule even reaches back to limits imposed before June 1. It grew out of the MGC’s own multi-year study, which found that only about 0.64% of accounts (roughly 13,400 of some 2.1 million) were limited, but that above-average winners were far more likely to be among them. FanDuel, DraftKings, and Fanatics all confirmed they began sending the required notices on day one. Separately, 205 CMR 257.00 governs how operators may use and share bettors’ personal data.

Daily fantasy and what is restricted

Daily fantasy sports is legal and regulated in Massachusetts, and the state was a pioneer here. Then-Attorney General Maura Healey issued the country’s first DFS consumer-protection regulations (940 CMR 34.00), effective July 1, 2016, requiring players to be 21 or older, banning college and high-school contests, mandating segregated player funds, and requiring beginner-only games. The legislature authorized DFS by statute later in 2016, and a 2018 budget removed a sunset clause, making it permanent.

The state draws a hard line at house-banked “pick’em” games, though. In February 2024, Attorney General Andrea Campbell sent cease-and-desist letters to 10 pick’em DFS operators, treating their against-the-house products as unlicensed sports betting that must run through a licensed sportsbook. PrizePicks and Underdog were not among the 10; both had already shifted to peer-to-peer formats (PrizePicks launched its peer-to-peer “Arena” game in the state on March 8, 2024).

Prediction markets

The live 2026 question, as everywhere, is prediction markets. Platforms like Kalshi let people trade contracts on game outcomes under federal (CFTC) oversight, effectively offering sports wagers without a state license or the state’s 21+ and consumer-protection rules (Kalshi has taken contracts from users as young as 18).

Massachusetts did not wait to be sued, and it is not one of the states the CFTC has taken to federal court (that list runs to Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin). Instead the state went on offense. Attorney General Andrea Campbell sued Kalshi in Suffolk County Superior Court in September 2025, arguing it was running unlicensed sports betting. In January 2026, Judge Christopher Barry-Smith granted a first-in-the-nation preliminary injunction barring Kalshi from offering sports event contracts to Massachusetts residents, rejecting the argument that federal commodities law wipes out state gambling rules.

Here is the catch, and it is the freshness hook: that injunction is currently on hold. After Barry-Smith declined to pause his own order, a Massachusetts Appeals Court justice granted Kalshi a stay in mid-February 2026, so Kalshi keeps operating in the state while the case is appealed. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court took the appeal directly and heard oral argument on May 4, 2026, where the justices sounded skeptical of Kalshi. A ruling was still pending as of July 31, 2026 (analysts expect it around early September). The case is docketed as SJC-13906. Attorneys general from 37 states and the District of Columbia, led by Nevada and Ohio, filed a brief backing Massachusetts, and the CFTC filed its own brief on the other side, arguing that federal jurisdiction is exclusive.

One nuance keeps Massachusetts out of the usual circuit-split story. It sits in the federal First Circuit, but because its Kalshi fight is in state court, it is not part of the federal appeals-court fight that runs from New Jersey, where the Third Circuit leaned toward Kalshi in April 2026, to Ohio, where the Sixth Circuit refused Kalshi emergency relief and heard argument in the consolidated Ohio and Tennessee appeals on July 30, 2026 without ruling since. Those appeals courts are not actually split yet: only the Third has ruled, and only at the preliminary-injunction stage. Massachusetts is fighting the same war on a separate, state-court front.

The honest 2026 outlook

For a bettor today, Massachusetts is simple: legal, deep, 21-and-up, and inside state lines, with the in-state college rule as the main thing to remember. The uncertainty is political and legal, not existential.

The bill to watch is S.302, the “Bettor Health Act” from Senator John Keenan. It would raise the online tax from 20% to 51% (matching New York), ban all in-play and prop betting, ban ads during televised games and most promotions, and require affordability checks for anyone wagering more than $1,000 a day or $10,000 a month. The Joint Committee on Economic Development advanced it in March 2026, but it never came to a floor vote in either chamber, and formal legislative sessions closed on July 31, 2026 with it still sitting in Senate Ways and Means. Massachusetts changed its rules for 2026 so that bills already passed by both chambers and in conference by that date can keep negotiating into the autumn, but S.302 does not qualify, so the close ends its run for this session. (The Legislature’s own bill-history site has been unreachable from here, so that is based on the last status we could read plus the absence of any report of a vote.) The other things to watch are the SJC’s Kalshi ruling and whether bet365 completes its licensing. Neither changes the basics for someone placing a bet this week.

FAQ

Is FanDuel legal in Massachusetts? Yes. FanDuel holds one of the state’s untethered online licenses and has operated since the March 2023 mobile launch. You must be 21 or older and physically in Massachusetts to bet.

Is DraftKings legal in Massachusetts? Yes, and it is the home team. DraftKings is headquartered in Boston and is the largest sportsbook in the state, live since the March 2023 launch.

What is the betting age in Massachusetts? 21, for both sportsbooks and daily fantasy. The 21+ floor is set in the sports wagering statute (Chapter 23N) and enforced by the Gaming Commission.

Can I bet on Boston College? Only in a tournament. Massachusetts bars bets on its own college teams unless they are playing in a tournament of four or more schools, such as March Madness or the Beanpot. You cannot bet a regular-season Boston College game, and you can never bet an individual college player’s prop.

Is Kalshi legal in Massachusetts? It is contested. A state judge ordered Kalshi to stop offering sports contracts to Massachusetts residents, but that order is stayed while the state’s high court weighs the appeal, so Kalshi still operates in the interim. Treat it as unsettled.

How many sportsbooks can I bet with in Massachusetts? Seven online books (DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Caesars, Fanatics, theScore Bet, and Bally Bet) plus three retail casinos. bet365 has applied but is not yet live. Check the Gaming Commission’s licensee list for the current roster.