Texas Betting News

Sports fans in Texas have been waiting on pins and needles for years to see if the state will ever legalize sports betting. That wait lives on, and it will continue until at least November 2022, when the next major elections are held and the matter is expected to be voted on. But Beto O'Rourke, a former presidential candidate now running for governor in Texas, has just recently thrown an interesting wrinkle into the equation. 

Unlike more than half of the United States, Texas has yet to legalize online sports betting for its residents. Though many have hoped that would change, there has been a healthy amount of skepticism surrounding the stance of the government, tribes who operate casinos, and lobbyists pushing for current restrictions to remain in place. But for the first time in quite a while, it's starting to feel like legal sports betting will be coming to Texas—not immediately, but at least in the near future.

Texas continues to remain among the holdouts in the United States when it comes to legalizing sports betting. This insistence on not addressing the issue with any sort of urgency has many citizens and political figures annoyed—particularly when the state has passed on so many ostensibly intriguing proposals. What's next for the future of sports betting in Texas, if anything? We're not quite sure. But it begins with lobbyists spending truckloads of money to try inflicting change.

Sports betting continues to receive the green light from plenty of places in the United States. It has already hit Illinois this year, among other locales, and is about to reach New York. And yet, along with California, Texas appears to be behind the times. Not only is sports betting yet to be legalized, but it has no chance of getting the official okay until 2023...and that's if residents are lucky.