Kentucky Casinos and Gambling

Short Summary: Kentucky is one of the most restrictive states for land-based gambling of the fifty as this state is home to zero casinos proper. In addition to a booming lottery industry, Kentucky is home to six significant horse racetracks, including the Churchill Downs, and offers LIve and Simulcast Wagering. A few of these tracks also offer historical horse racing terminals, which resemble slot machines, but are not.

Kentucky is one of the more politically Conservative of the US States and that Conservatism also extends to gambling. The state is not home to casinos of any kind, but nevertheless, they are at least not explicitly restrictive when it comes to online gambling. While no online casinos can call the state home, it is not illegal for a person to be gambling online in the capacity of a player.

Most Kentucky residents who want to play casino games travel to Indiana, West Virginia, or Ohio where they can play legally. Indiana has many riverboat based casinos along the Ohio River, West Virginia has a dog track and casino fairly close to Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio has a large casino just across the river from Kentucky.

Perhaps the world’s most famous horse racing event, The Kentucky Derby, is held annually at Churchill Downs, located in Louisville, Kentucky. This event is the biggest of its kind and has run every year since 1875. Additionally, it gets more racing handle (total bets) than any other race throughout the year, both live and simulcast. Finally, it is the first of the three events (the others being the Belmont Stakes and The Preakness) to comprise the Triple Crown, so in order to be a Triple Crown contender, the horse must first win this event.

Kentucky Flag It should also be mentioned that this year (2019) marks the first year that the Kentucky Derby’s purse will be increased to three million (US) dollars. That’s impressive, if for no other reason, because most horse tracks across the country are either closing or relying upon VLT (video lottery terminal) revenue to survive.

Naturally, being one of the biggest states in the country (if not arguably the biggest) for live horse racing/betting, the State of Kentucky also allows for pari-mutuel simulcast wagering. Kentucky, however, does not have any active greyhound tracks.

While there are no casinos or slot machines of the traditional sense in Kentucky, at least not legal ones, the state’s racetracks can be home (if they choose) to historical racing machines. Essentially, the player makes bets on historical races on these electronic gambling devices and the function is really (as with other horse tracks with real slot machines or VLT’s) to drum up additional revenue for the tracks.

Additional forms of gambling are legal in the state, including:

Lottery
Charitable

The State of Kentucky is pretty generous insofar as it does not take a cut of charitable gambling revenues, rather, it just has licensing fees and collects fines for any violations of the code. They may make some money in that regard, however, as Kentucky seems to have some of the most stringent and specific charitable gambling codes in the country.

The lottery is quite popular in Kentucky. As you can see, for Fiscal Year 2018, the lottery cracked one billion in sales pretty safely. This performance was led mainly by impressive revenues in scratch-off sales, but all other lottery segments reported positive growth. Kentucky does participate in the two largest national lotteries: Powerball and Mega Millions.

Based on a population estimate of 4.468 million residents, the average (mean) lottery sales per resident, per annum, was $233.33 for Fiscal Year 2018. Remember, while Kentucky does have Lottery Keno (drawings shown on TV in the locations of Keno vendors) there are no Video Lottery Terminals (ie: slots) to prop up these numbers. Given that Keno came in with less than 100 million dollars in revenue for the year, these numbers are largely driven by pure lottery performance.

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Online Gambling Legality In Kentucky

Sports bettors out there got a stroke of luck as regulated online sports betting finally became legal in 2023, with online sportsbooks going live later that same year. The Legislature had bills die in committee for a period of about two years, then in 2022, an online sports betting bill finally passed in the House of Representatives, only to fail to even be voted on in the Senate.

In the meantime, online casino-style games are not state-regulated, which is a state of affairs that we do not expect to change anytime soon. One of the big hangups with the various sorts betting bills is that legislators were concerned that it would open the door to casino-style games, so we would expect the state to maintain its negative attitude towards those for at least a few more years.

That stands to reason, of course, because the state also doesn’t have any traditional land-based casinos.

For those of you out there not inclined to bet on sports, the good news is that many online casinos offer their products to Kentucky residents.

However, there are many online casinos who will NOT conduct business in Kentucky. This is largely due to a lawsuit in the state in which the state essentially awarded itself (though it claimed it was on behalf of the consumers) hundreds of millions of dollars for players allegedly defrauded by PokerStars. This decision was later overturned (December 2018).

On appeal, with the Appeals Court maintaining that the state is NOT an individual and may not sue in the capacity of an individual. More than that, the State of Kentucky failed to identify any actual individuals who lost money on PokerStars.

Interestingly, unless the statute of limitations has tolled, it means that a class action lawsuit against PokerStars could/could have theoretically prevailed, but that is because there were several (alleged) individuals who were aggrieved by PokerStars’ practices, the state itself was clearly unharmed.

In any case, many sites do not operate within the confines of the State of Kentucky for precisely this reason. There are several other sites who operate in a licensed and regulated way elsewhere in the United States (such as Caesar’s in New Jersey, for one example) who would obviously choose not to operate in an unregulated manner in other states.

The closest that Kentucky comes to legalized and regulated online gambling is the fact that they do conduct iLottery Internet sales, but those sales comprise just under 1% of total lottery sales in Fiscal Year 2018 as they came in at barely over ten million dollars.

We should also note that, in our research, we could find no law that would make playing at online casinos illegal for players; it’s just illegal to operate an online casino in the state. If you’re looking for casino games, we’d encourage you to check out our top picks above!

The Legality Of Online Gambling In Kentucky

Update: We would expect Kentucky to be one of the slowest states to legalize and regulate different forms of online gambling as the state does not even have Commercial Casinos and has long been an opponent of all expansions to gambling.

According to Saturday Down South, a bill had passed the House of Representatives in April of this year (2022), pretty safely, in fact, but that bill would eventually go to the Senate and fail. Quoting in part:

“I think it’s a natural extension of our long history and tradition of betting pari-mutuelly on horses, which is a form of sports betting in my opinion. But there’s still a lot of anti-gambling sentiment in this building,” Thayer said.
The Kentucky House of Representatives approved its sports betting bill by a vote of 58-30 last week. Rep. Adam Koenig’s (R-Erlanger) bill, HB 606, will now move to the Kentucky Senate. If approved by the Senate, it would then go to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear for his signature before it becomes law.

I don’t know about this argument. I’m in favor of states legalizing online casinos and sportsbooks on principle alone, but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to equate horse racing and sports betting. For one thing, there is a far greater level of interest in sports betting, so one would assume that there would be far more punters than there are people picking the ponies.

According to WSN, the 2022 did not technically fail in the Senate, but that’s because the Senate totally ignored it and there was no vote. I don’t know how many, “No,” votes there would have been, but the fact that they blatantly ignored it tells me that individual Senators did not necessarily want to be on the record as voting against it.

My observation of Kentucky is that they are something of a fake Libertarian state. They sort of claim to be small Government and in favor of letting people do what they will, but when the time comes to increase the liberties that people can enjoy, they often do not do so. Also, the state introduced a bill that would make abortion Unconstitutional, which the voters soundly rejected, but the fact that Kentucky would even float such a bill is a bit telling.

In any event, Kentucky currently has no legal sports betting whatsoever, which is a bit of a shame as I imagine physical sports betting would have helped the state’s race tracks a ton. However, that bill was tied to the online bill, so it might stand a chance of getting a vote in the Senate if Kentucky does it as two separate bills. Perhaps the Senate wouldn’t have such an apparent problem with live sports betting.

In any event, given that the state has no apparent interest in even putting online sports betting to an actual Senate vote, we would expect that online casino-style gambling is a LONG way away from being legalized, same with poker, assuming it ever happens at all.

The good news for you is there are a number of offshore online casinos still willing to offer their products to residents of the Bluegrass State, so for those of you looking to play slots, tables or Video Poker, feel free to check out our top recommendations above!

While Kentucky has no actual casinos or legalized slot machines, online or otherwise, there is currently nothing in the law that would serve to proscribe a penalty for anyone acting as a mere player. The law does proscribe penalties for, “Advancing Gambling Activity,” but that would apply either to operators or those working on the behalf of operators.

Due to the fact that there is no specifically legalized online gambling sites in the state, Kentucky is one of the states to whom most Internet casinos will offer their services. Almost invariably, these sites will be housed outside of the United States and out of the reach of Kentucky Law Enforcement. The state really can’t do anything in an area in which it has no jurisdiction.

However, there are many online casinos who will NOT conduct business in Kentucky. This is largely due to a lawsuit in the state in which the state essentially awarded itself (though it claimed it was on behalf of the consumers) hundreds of millions of dollars for players allegedly defrauded by PokerStars. This decision was later overturned (December 2018).

On appeal, with the Appeals Court maintaining that the state is NOT an individual and may not sue in the capacity of an individual. More than that, the State of Kentucky failed to identify any actual individuals who lost money on PokerStars.

In any case, many sites do not operate within the confines of the State of Kentucky for precisely this reason. There are several other sites who operate in a licensed and regulated way elsewhere in the United States (such as Caesar’s in New Jersey, for one example) who would obviously choose not to operate in an unregulated manner in other states.

Land Casinos In Kentucky

Again, the State of Kentucky is not home to any land casinos and does not authorize its racetracks to offer slot machines, video poker or any sort of poker/table games. With that said, there are six operating horse tracks in the state as can be seen here.

Churchill Downs

Churchill Downs is home to the Kentucky Derby, which we discussed at length above. It is located in Louisville, Kentucky.

Keeneland

Located in Lexington, Kentucky, this horse track is home to several Breeders Cup events throughout the year.

Kentucky Downs

Located in Franklin, Kentucky (on the Kentucky/Tennessee border) this racetrack is primarily well-known for being a European-style racetrack. In addition to not being oval in shape, this also means that the entire track is comprised of grass rather than dirt. This location features several hundred, “Historical Racing,” betting terminals as well as charitable bingo operations.

Turfway Park

Located ten miles South of the Ohio/Kentucky border near Cincinnati, Ohio, this racetrack is located in Boone County, Kentucky (near Florence) and has mostly subsided on its simulcast operations. There are only two actual live racing meets on the calendar which comprise two sets of a few weeks. Generally, the holiday meet takes place in December with the other annual meet taking place in Late Winter or Early Spring.

This location has varying simulcast hours as can be seen here.

And is generally closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, with exception to significant racing events taking place elsewhere. (Kentucky Derby week is one example)

Ellis Park

Ellis Park is interesting, if for no other reason, than its location. This racetrack is located NORTH of the Ohio River at the Indiana/Kentucky border, so if you ask anyone not from around there, they would say it is in Indiana. However, the course of the river has altered a bit since 1792, when Kentucky became a state, so that little bit of land (and some surrounding it) is North of the Ohio, yet still part of Kentucky.

This is another one of those tracks that has somewhat limited live racing operations, though perhaps not quite as limited as Turfway Park, which you can see here.

And, more than anything else, is primarily a location for simulcast wagering.

This Henderson County locations also features historical racing terminals which, to the untrained eye, otherwise look like slot machines.

The Red Mile

This track partnered with Keeneland to open a Lexington, Kentucky location that offers live racing as well as simulcast betting and historical horse racing betting. This is known primarily as a harness racing track (horses pull riders on two-wheeled carts) with banked turns, enabling many world record times to have been set over the years.

Live Racing takes place here about three months of the year while simulcast and other operations take place year round.

Horse Racing-In General

As with the racetracks in many other states, they tend to operate racing calendars set to limit expenses and focus on simulcast wagering. In a sense, it can almost be seen as all of the tracks working in concert to manage their expenses while keeping simulcast going around the calendar. Much like greyhound racing, many horse racing tracks would take a loss without simulcast wagering and/or other forms of gambling.

Either way, with six tracks and no casinos in any real sense, it’s pretty impressive that Kentucky is able to keep its racing industry plugging along so well, or in the case of Churchill Downs, growing over the years. Other tracks, both horses and greyhounds, find themselves struggling around the country…even certain ones propped up artificially by video lottery terminals.

Poker in Kentucky

Poker is not legal in the state of Kentucky. Just like residents who want to play casino games, Kentucky players often travel to Indiana, West Virginia, and Ohio to play in legalized poker rooms. The casinos in Cincinnati, OH, Cross Lanes, WV, and most in Indiana along the Ohio River have active poker rooms.

Kentucky Casino Legislation

While I’ve seen estimates as high as a half billion dollars in revenue leaving the state as the citizens travel to surrounding areas to gamble, there hasn’t been much advancement toward casino gambling in the state. Bills have been introduced and defeated over at least the past eight years on a regular basis, but it doesn’t appear that anything will change in the near future.

Sports Betting in Kentucky

The only type of betting legalized in Kentucky involves horse racing so you can’t legally place a sports bet in the state or find a legalized bookmaking operation.

Kentucky Bingo and Charitable Gaming

Under certain circumstances, some nonprofit organizations can offer raffles, bingo, and casino events. While charity gaming includes many things it specifically doesn’t include any type of slot machine or wager on any sporting event or horse race. Organizations must be non-profit designated by the federal government (501(c)(3)) or be a university, state college, or school. The regulations are quite strict, but once an organization jumps through the required hoops they can operate a wide range of events, including up to two casino events a year. These events can’t be longer than six hours and can only offer particular games, but they can be quite profitable because of the lack of competition in the state.

Lottery

If you live in Kentucky you have a wide range of lottery options. You can play in the multi-state Powerball jackpot game, the multiple state Mega Millions drawings, and all of the games run by the state of Kentucky.

Slot Machine Ownership

Kentucky is one of the few states where residents can own any slot machine, no matter when it was manufactured. Along with West Virginia and Ohio, Kentucky creates a tri-state area of unrestricted slot machine ownership.

Conclusion And Prognosis

Despite the existence of the electronic historical racing terminals, we do not expect Kentucky to legalize or regulate any expanded form of actual casino slot machines, poker or table games. Between the existing machines and simulcast wagering, the state’s six race tracks seem to be doing well-enough, and any gambling expansions that have taken place in the state have seemed to serve the interests of keeping the racetracks in the black.

In other words, it’s likely going to require the racetracks to start faltering before we are going to see any major casino-type gambling expansion in the state.

This also extends to online gambling which, while not illegal for players, is illegal for operators as, “Advancing Gambling Activity.” Generally speaking, most of the states in the United States that have legalized and regulated online gambling also tend to be home to actual land-based casinos and such regulation/legalization goes through same. Strictly speaking, it’s possible that such does not actually have to be the case, (such as WSOP operating the legalized/regulated online poker in Nevada) but it is more often than not.