Vermont and Washington, DC Take Sports Bets and Have No Casino Floor. One Chooses That. The Other Needs Congress.
Vermont's sports betting law allows two to six operators 'through a mobile sports wagering platform' and nothing else. In Washington, DC, a federal statute makes it unlawful to possess 'any gambling device.' Same result, different locks.
Published 2026-11-02.
Vermont's Act 63, approved by Governor Phil Scott on June 14, 2023, lets the state contract with "a minimum of two but not more than six" sports wagering operators and authorizes them to take bets "through a mobile sports wagering platform." That is the entire delivery mechanism. There is no counter, no kiosk, no sportsbook bar anywhere in Vermont, and the first legal bets were placed on phones on January 11, 2024.
Washington, DC has had a sportsbook inside Capital One Arena since 2020 and a half-dozen betting apps on the street since 2024, and it has a lock of a different kind. Title 15 of the United States Code, section 1175, makes it unlawful to "manufacture, recondition, repair, sell, transport, possess, or use any gambling device" in the District of Columbia. The exceptions in the statute cover ships, Indiana and Alaska; none of them mentions the District. A slot machine in DC needs Congress.
Both places take sports bets and have no casino. They are not the same case.
Vermont built a market with no building in it
The Department of Liquor and Lottery picked three operators in December 2023, DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics, on six-year contracts, after bids that offered the state 31% to 33% of adjusted gross revenue against a statutory floor of 20%. BetMGM and Penn were rejected. The law requires every wager to be "initiated and received within the State of Vermont" and bars bets from anyone physically outside it, which is standard; what is not standard is that nothing in the chapter authorizes a retail location at all.
The money is modest and growing. In the first six months, January to June 2024, Vermonters wagered $101.1 million and the state's share was $3.53 million. Fiscal 2025 brought $212.5 million of handle and $6.22 million to the state. For calendar 2025 the department's summary shows $235.1 million wagered, $22.8 million kept by the books and $7.25 million paid to Vermont, a 31.8% share. September 2026 alone was $19.8 million of handle and $542,813 to the state. For scale, the Vermont Lottery sold $169 million of tickets in fiscal 2024.
That is a working market, and it was built without a single square foot of gambling floor.
Nobody in Vermont wrote a ban down
Vermont's constitution does not contain the words gambling, gaming, lottery, casino or wager. There is no clause to amend. A casino in Vermont would take an ordinary act of the General Assembly, the same route Massachusetts used in 2011, and our explainer on constitutional bans versus statutes puts Vermont in the easiest category of all.
The statutes say what is allowed instead. Title 13, section 2143 lets nonprofits run games of chance and even "casino events," but caps a nonprofit at one casino event a calendar month and a nonprofit-owned venue at two. Break-open tickets are regulated under the lottery chapter. Pari-mutuel wagering on horses was repealed by a 2020 act. There has never been a commercial gambling floor in the state.
Bills appear and stop. A single-casino proposal from Representative Ronald Hubert failed six years in a row before 2015, by the trade press's count. In the current session, S.318, "An act relating to casino gaming," was read a first time on January 27, 2026 and referred to the Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs Committee, and the bill tracker shows nothing since. Vermont is the clearest example in the country of a state that could legalize casinos with a majority vote and does not want to.
DC: a bad app, a good app, and a federal lock on the machines
DC's history is the opposite of tidy. The Council passed the Sports Wagering Lottery Amendment Act in December 2018; it became law on May 3, 2019 after the 60-day congressional review the Home Rule Act requires for acts touching the criminal code. The lottery's own app, GambetDC, built by Intralot under a no-bid contract, launched in May 2020 and underperformed for four years: the lottery's testimony for fiscal 2023 put GambetDC's handle at about $69.6 million and its net transfer to the city at almost $1.3 million, down $1.5 million on the year. Covers reported that the District had expected more than $20 million a year.
FanDuel replaced Intralot's platform on April 15, 2024, and that summer the Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Support Act opened the market. From August 1, 2024, Class A operators pay 20% of gross revenue, Class B retail operators 10%, and Class C licensees, a new category for teams that play at least 90% of their home games in the District, pay 30% for a $2 million, five-year license. BetMGM and Caesars went citywide on July 17, 2024, DraftKings on July 26, Fanatics on September 12, and the trackers also list theScore Bet. The District's 2025 handle, compiled from the lottery's monthly reports by Covers and RG, was about $856 million, with roughly $94.5 million in operator revenue and $22 million in tax.
And then the ceiling. The federal ban on gambling devices in the District cannot be repealed by the Council, and every DC act also sits through a congressional review period under the Home Rule Act. When Chatman Holdings floated a casino resort on Reservation 13 near the old RFK site in November 2025, Casino.org's report was blunt that casinos "would need an act of Congress," and a Bowser-backed bill to allow poker and blackjack, games that are not devices, had stalled in the Council. We found no 2026 movement on either.
Where residents actually go
Vermont's nearest tables are over a border of one kind or another. From Burlington, Casino de Montréal is about 73 miles in a straight line, with a national border in between. Saratoga Casino Hotel, a harness-track racino with video gaming machines and no live dealers, is about 101 miles; Rivers Casino Schenectady, with real tables, about 120; Encore Boston Harbor about 179. The Akwesasne Mohawk casino in Hogansburg, New York, in that state's far north, is the other option, and the awkward one from everywhere in Vermont but the Northeast Kingdom.
DC is the easy one. MGM National Harbor is about 9 miles from the center of the city, across the Maryland line in Prince George's County; Live! Casino Maryland about 24; Hollywood Perryville about 70; Rivers Casino Portsmouth in Virginia about 150. Our casinos near Washington page has the full list with distances. Virginia keeps trying to bring one closer: a bill for a Tysons casino passed both chambers in March 2026, 25 to 13 in the Senate and 55 to 41 in the House, and Governor Spanberger vetoed it on April 9, saying local boards should lead on casino development. Petersburg's temporary Live! Casino Virginia opened on January 22, 2026 with more than 900 slots and 30 tables; the permanent resort is due in late 2027.
Where the usual advice is wrong
The usual theory is that sports betting is the gateway and casinos follow. Our Tennessee piece showed one way that fails, where the legal argument that admits sports bets is the one a casino cannot make. Vermont and DC add two more.
Vermont shows that a state with no legal obstacle at all can simply decline. The gateway theory predicts that a state two years into a sports betting market with a silent constitution would be writing a casino bill; Vermont's casino bill got one reading. The state has chosen a form of gambling that employs almost nobody, occupies no land and sends a third of its revenue to Montpelier, and it looks content.
DC shows the reverse: a government that might well want a casino and cannot have one on its own authority. The betting apps live in a gap the device statute does not cover, because a phone is not a gambling device in its sense; a slot machine is. Nothing the Council passes changes that. Watch Congress, not the Wilson Building.
For a bettor, the practical differences are small and worth knowing. In Vermont there is no retail book, so there is no in-person loyalty program and nothing to comp; the state's share is high and the operators' promotions reflect it. In DC the arena book is the one retail outlet, the Class C rule keeps competitors' apps from working within two blocks of a licensed venue, and the nearest slot machine is a nine-mile drive to Maryland. Both markets are mobile first, which also means the deposit limits and self-exclusion tools are in the app rather than at a desk. If betting has stopped being a cost you set in advance, 1-800-GAMBLER is free and confidential in both places.
Topics
- vermont
- washington-dc
- sports-betting
- gambling-law
- legality
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