Wyoming Sports Betting: Low Taxes Invite Sportsbooks, HHR Pulls from Tribal Casinos
With the lowest population of any U.S. state - just shy of 600,000 residents - Montana at first might seem to be an unlikely state to appeal to the leading national sportsbooks.
There also is no major professional sports franchise in Wyoming, nor a football or basketball program that has a presence on the national stage. And of the five states that border Wyoming, three of them also have no major pro sports teams of their own.
Yet in 2026, FanDuel, Caesars, and Fanatics, amongst others - by some measures the largest sportsbook operators in the nation - all have taken up roots in Wyoming.
WY’s 10% tax on sports betting made setting up shop easy
The reason is a basic fundamental for any business - a low tax rate that makes it much easier to make a profit. Wyoming charges only a 10% tax, about half of the national average. On top of that, the fee for a five-year sports betting license was a modest $100,000.
A legislative committee in June 2025 proposed doubling the state tax rate on sportsbooks to 20%, but it failed to advance. That increase wouldn't necessarily induce any of the five major players to leave, but any rate higher than that could prove counterproductive for the state budget because the market is simply so small.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon signed the state's sporting betting bill into law in April 2021, and the first sportsbooks accepted their first wagers five months later - just in time for the college and professional football seasons.
The state added its fifth mobile sportsbook in 2024, and the first retail sportsbook launched a year later at the Northern Arapaho Tribe's Wind River Hotel & Casino.
A total of $234.5 million was wagered in Wyoming in 2025.
The real gambling juggernaut in Wyoming: HHR
Unlike virtually every other state, sportsbook wagers made up less than 10% of the legal, regulated gambling in Wyoming in 2025.
Historical horse racing machines, meanwhile, took in 90% of the money risked in the state - or $2.49 billion. The HHR devices closely resemble slot machines, with a seldom-used option on the machines to watch a 2-minute race from past years and any number of U.S. racetracks and handicap the race based on past performance and other statistics.
The key impetus for lawmakers was to try to revive the state's extinct horse racing industry. A portion of the revenue from the HHR devices would go to racing purses. As a result of the launch of the entertainment option in 2013, the state went from hosting zero races in 2010 to nearly 500 races in 2023.
There are 40 off-track betting locations across the state, with a total of more than 3,000 HHR machines - although seven of Wyoming's 23 counties do not allow any of the machines within their boundaries.
The other "HHR states" in the U.S. are Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oregon.
Casinos in Wyoming
All four of the casinos in Wyoming are operated by the Northern Arapaho Tribe, and each of them are located in Fremont County - 789 Casino in Riverton, Little Wind Casino in Ethete, Shoshone Rose Casino in Fort Washakie, and Wind River Casino in Riverton.
Only Riverton - with a population of just over 10,000 - of the three casino locales has as many as 2,000 residents.
Shoshone Rose and Wind River casinos feature card-based table games and slot machines, and also have hotels on the premises. The other two facilities merely offer electronic gaming machines that look a lot like slots, but technically are classified as bingo.
In 2025, a Northern Arapaho Tribe spokesman who opposed further HHR machines being approved in the state said that its casinos have had 66% fewer visitors and a 34% decrease in gaming revenue in the dozen years since HHR gambling was launched. He estimated that directly has led to the loss of 500 jobs.
He also estimated that authorization of online casino gaming could lead to another 11% drop in tribal casino revenues.
