Kentucky Gambling: Horse Racing and Sportsbooks
The Kentucky Derby - the first leg in U.S. thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown - has been run annually at Churchill Downs in Louisville since 1875.
The race - and the two-week-long festival that runs before the big event on the first Saturday in May - is a cornerstone of the state's culture. But what makes the embrace of betting on horse races so unusual is that in general, the state’s residents historically have not been inclined to legalize other forms of gambling.
For instance, even as 2026 began, the state still has not authorized full-fledged casinos.
And while numerous states quickly launched sports betting within months of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in May 2018 that opened the door for any state to approve it, Kentucky lawmakers lagged behind the trend.
It wasn't until Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear signed a sports betting bill into law in March 2023 that the road was paved for him to place the first legal wager in Kentucky six months later.
Even then, the state’s horse racing industry was not left out of the loop. Retail sportsbooks are located at the state's racetracks and off-track wagering facilities, and mobile sportsbooks serve as partners to the tracks.
Sportsbooks finished strong in 2025
The state's operators closed 2025 with a flourish, with yearly highs set in November and December. The sportsbooks collected a monthly-best $45.6 million in November on $324.5 million in betting handle – thanks to a "hold" rate of 14% - and then took in another $37.7 million in December due to a 13.6% hold rate.
For the year, Kentucky's sportsbooks fell just shy of $3 billion in total wagers, while reporting combined revenue of $333 million.
Given that 2026 will only be a third full year of sports betting in the state, another double-digit rise in both betting handle and revenue seems quite likely.
The state has authorized national mobile sportsbook industry market leaders like FanDuel, Caesars, and Fanatics as racetrack partners, as well as others such as thescore and Circa Sports.
In January 2026, the two leading sportsbooks in the states took in $107.4 million in betting handle and $101.1 million, respectively.
Legal age for sports betting in Kentucky
While most states restrict sports betting to those age 21 and higher, many of those same states permit wagering on a horse race for those age 18 and up. With Kentucky's focus on horse racing, it shouldn't be too surprising that state law allows sportsbooks to offer sports bets for that same age minimum as at the tracks.
That said, only a few sportsbooks like Circa Sports currently adhere to that minimum age. The other sportsbooks in the state prefer to stick to the age 21 minimum that is in place almost universally across the U.S.
Given that Kentucky borders seven states that offer sports betting with the age-21 requirement, it does seem simpler to keep the age the same to avoid potentially running afoul of other state regulators unintentionally.
Kentucky's variation on Vegas-style slot machines
While you won't find any legal roulette wheels or blackjack or craps tables anywhere in Kentucky, the state's racetracks do offer an option that - for many - certainly looks and feels like slot machines.
Officially called "historical horse racing machines," the devices feature videos of more than 50,000 previous races around the country. In theory, the customer handicaps the race based on traditional metrics such as the unnamed jockey's winning percentage - then pores over the odds for each horse before choosing their wagers as if the race was live.
In practice, however, gamblers far more often use the "auto-cap" option - in the same way that few lottery ticket buyers actually choose their own numbers. Spinning reels - reminiscent of slot machines - quickly indicate to the bettor whether their random gamble was successful.
The HHR machines not only are lucrative for the operators, the state's horse racing industry also receives a slice of the net revenue to go toward boosting racing purses. That subsidy has helped maintain the high quality of racing fields at Kentucky's tracks.
Kentucky Downs in Franklin – conveniently located near the border of Tennessee, which has no casinos - installed the first such machines in 2011. Many years of legal wrangling finally ended when state lawmakers passed a bill a decade later to explicitly authorize historical horse racing.
That amendment to the state's gambling laws nullified a state Supreme Court decision in 2020 that temporarily created confusion about whether the gambling could continue.
With questions of legality now settled, the HHR industry in Kentucky grew to more than 8,000 machines in more than a dozen facilities by the end of 2025. According to Kentucky regulators, residents and visitors wagered more than $10 billion in the Fiscal Year dating from mid-2024 to mid-2025.
