Short Summary: Delaware is the most liberal (tied with New Jersey) when it comes to gambling laws. In addition to land-based casinos tied to racetracks; the state has legal and regulated charitable gambling with minimal fees or oversight, simulcast racing wagering, live racing, daily fantasy sports, legalized and regulated online gambling and lottery. There is really nothing left they could possibly authorize. Even private clubs and organizations are permitted to offer machines.
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Delaware is easily one of the most gambling-friendly states in the country and is arguably even more liberal on gaming than Nevada is. In addition to every form of gambling imaginable being legal in the State (including sports betting—ALREADY!!!) the state also has online casino gambling, which Nevada only has for poker. Here’s your full list:
Furthermore, the State of Nevada does not have a lottery, but it’s very possible that is just more by choice than anything. I don’t think it’s out of any conservative tendencies towards gambling as they were the first state to have any such legalized and regulated.
Delaware is extremely liberal when it comes to Charitable Gambling, though they do have a commission that regulates it. The legal forms of Charitable Gaming simply require that the entity wishing to conduct the event, such as bingo, pay $15 per day that they are conducting it. In the event that there are no prizes offered greater than $5, then even that fee is not required. More than that, no taxes are taken out of charitable gambling operations. The only other law in this regard is no individual person is permitted to lose more than $150/day by way of Charitable Gaming.
Despite the fact that all of these other forms of legalized and regulated gambling exist in the state, the state lottery still does quite well. One would think that the lottery revenues might not be so strong given all of the other available forms of gambling, but it holds its own. The simple fact of the matter is that most casino gamblers have little to no interest in playing the lottery and most lottery players have little to no interest in visiting the casinos.
The three Delaware casinos are also the locations that offer the racetracks for live horse racing. Greyhound racing is illegal within the State of Delaware, which is the case with the vast majority of the US states.
As with West Virginia, the casinos in the State of Delaware are, “Tied to,” some sort of racing track or another. In the case of all three Delaware casinos, they are tied to a horse racing track. With respect to West Virginia, two casinos are tied to horse racing tracks whilst two others are tied to greyhound tracks. The Greenbriar, in West Virginia, is considered a private casino and has certain barriers to the public playing there unless they are paying to do something else at the resort, or are attending a conference, wedding or something along those lines.
Private clubs, charities and non-profit organizations are even permitted to offer limited slot machines as long as they cut the state in on 40% of the revenues. There are some states who tax their actual casinos more than that!
This is slightly more restrictive than Nevada, a state in which a casino can be theoretically licensed in any location not prohibited by a municipality, but Delaware is geographically fairly small and could arguably not sustain many more than three casinos full-on casinos. There is also significant Regional competition in Rhode Island.
Most people think the only place to legally place a sports bet in the United States is in Las Vegas. While this is true of some types of sports wagers, Delaware also offers sports betting.
In 2009, the state legalized sports betting but was sued by the large sports leagues in the country. The claim was that Delaware was violating federal law. After a court battle, it was decided that casinos in Delaware could start accepting parlay bets.
Online sports betting in Delaware was regulated in 2018. At the time being, it is available through the BetRivers app and in person at any of the state’s three retail gambling locations- Delaware Park Casino & Racing, Bally’s Dover Casino Resort and Harrington Raceway and Casino.
The state had an exclusive contract with 888 Holdings (William Hill) that expired in 2023, and officials replaced 888 by striking a deal with Rush Street Interactive, which operates BetRivers Sportsbook.
All three sportsbooks offer the same betting menu under Delaware Lottery rules, betting on professional and college football and basketball, pro baseball and hockey, horse racing, auto racing, international soccer, and more. It is not permitted to legally wager on in-state college teams, though.
There are state-regulated online casinos in Delaware and all three of them are offered via the state’s land-based casinos and powered by BetRivers. In 2023, Delaware’s state lottery issued a request for proposal from vendors to provide online sports betting as well as online poker and casino gambling.
Keno, video lottery, instant games like scratchers and online table games are offered to players. All of the slots at Delaware racinos are video lottery terminals, rather than genuine slots. As such, they are monitored and maintained by Delaware Lottery, not the casinos.
Naturally, three online casinos isn’t a very large number, so if you’re looking for new player promotions, it probably won’t be long until you run out. Fortunately, we couldn’t find anything in Delaware State law that would suggest it is illegal for you to play at an offshore casino, so please feel free to check out some of our top picks above!
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The racetrack at Delaware Park is also home to a casino with a full complement of slots, video keno and table games. In addition, according to their website, they offer sports betting as well as live keno during limited hours.
Live Poker is also offered at this casino.
As of the time of this writing, several table games are available including Roulette and Spanish 21.
Also according to their website, they are home to over 1,900 of the most in-demand slot machines in denominations ranging from a penny to $25, which makes them a fairly sizable casino that would rival, perhaps, some of the smaller to midsize casinos in places such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
The property has several restaurants, and while there is no hotel on site, they have a host hotel in the nearby Christiana Hilton.
Live Racing operates during the warmer months of the year, but when it is out-of-season, the simulcast center at this property remains open for the purposes of off-track betting.
Bally’s Dover Casino Resort, as with Delaware Park, features a full complement of gambling activities. Conveniently for its overnight visitors, there is a hotel on-site consisting of more than 500 guest rooms. This casino has some of the same other offerings according to its website.
Which include live keno during certain hours, more than 2,200 slot machines including progressives, popular penny machines and $100 slots, over forty tables for table games and well over a dozen poker tables. Table Games include Blackjack, Roulette, Craps, Three-Card Poker, Baccarat, High-Card Flush, Pai-Gow Poker, and many others.
Harness Racing operates during the colder months at this casino, from mid April.
They continue to offer simulcast racing year-round, even when there is no live racing taking place.
If you have not been to Delaware in sometime, you might recognize this building by its former name of Midway Slots. There is no hotel at this property, but they state that discounted rates are available at nearby Quality Inn and Holiday Inn.
This property is a little smaller than the others, but it still offers more than enough exciting slots machines, table games and poker games to choose from. Dining and Lounge options are available as well. Shuttle service appears to only be available to the hotel on the weekends, which would seem to make this more of a locals place than a destination casino.
The available table games include: Blackjack, 21+3, 3-Card Poker, 3-Card Blitz, 4-Card Poker, Craps, Heads Up Hold’em, In Bet, Louisianna Stud, Roulette, Spanish 21, and others.
Sportsbook operations as well as simulcast wagering are available during most hours of the day. Live Racing takes place during the warmer months of the year, though simulcast is open year round.
The State of Delaware is home to a lottery that does fairly well, though not so well as a state such as Connecticut, if you care to check out our Connecticut page.
Why Connecticut?
The main similarities with Connecticut are that it is a small and densely populated state with lots of better than average income earners. The main difference is that many folks in the State of Delaware have easier access to better forms of gambling, such as Commercial Casinos, so logically, they are less interested in playing lottery.
That ends up being reflected in the loss per resident numbers for the state, as you will soon see, but Delaware still comes in above average in this regard due to wealth and population density.
The general breakdown looks like this for Fiscal Year 2019 for the State of Delaware in traditional lottery games, Which you can find in their Annual Report:
| Instant Ticket Sales | Instant Ticket Prizes | Instant Ticket Return to Player | Drawing Ticket Sales | Drawing Ticket Prizes | Drawing Ticket Return to Player |
| 79,808,944 | 53,114,641 | 66.55% | 116,507,746 | 58,773,996 | 50.45% |
It’s tough to say why, but Delaware has a noticeably lower overall return on Instant Tickets than many other states. If we had to guess, our guess would be that they have a higher proportion of lower-denomination Instant Ticket sales, perhaps, than some other states. If not that, then perhaps it’s just that the games are just bad even by lottery standards.
From this, we can determine that Delaware residents and visitors lost a total of $84,428,053 to the Delaware State Lottery in the form of traditional games, that results, based on a 2019 population estimate of 973,764, in a total loss of $86.70/resident to the traditional lottery.
Delaware is one state with a lottery department that is responsible for a lot more than ticket sales, however. For one thing, Video Lottery Terminals (including casinos) go directly through the lottery, whereas most other states with casinos have a separate Division of Gaming Enforcement outside of the lottery.
Delaware also has a, “Sports Lottery,” which mainly amounts to parlay betting, but we imagine this is going to die down in favor of traditional sports betting.
In fact, the Delaware Lottery had a horrible 2020 compared to 2019, but we suspect that much of that had to do with Covid shutdowns and things along those lines. The first thing that we notice is that traditional lottery (Instant and Drawing Tickets) sales were down almost 3% compared to the 2019 numbers we highlighted above.
Interestingly, it was the multi-state drawing games that took a bath. It appears from the 2020 Annual Report that Delaware’s sales for all other traditional lottery forms were UP, but not by enough to make the difference on the shellacking that they took on drawing games.
Video Lottery revenues (including casino revenue cuts) were only 81.87% in 2020 of what they were in 2019, but again, the casinos (and other locations) were completely closed for some of that time.
Finally, the Sports Lottery only did 65.07% in 2020 of what it did in 2019, but there were no professional sports of any kind for a huge chunk of the year, so it really doesn’t come as a surprise.
In addition to the impact on the somewhat unique Sports Lottery, Delaware was also a state that was more aggressive on Covid shutdowns, which is why the full lottery report looks at Fiscal Year 2019 numbers. 2020 just varies too much by state based on how they handled the early stages of Covid.
Only slot machine collectors who have machines that are 25 years old or older may legally own slot machines in Delaware. Of course, anyone can call themselves a collector, but no one can own a machine newer than 25 years old except the casinos licensed by the state.
Any organization that qualifies as a charitable business in the state of Delaware can offer raffles, bingo, Texas Holdem poker tournaments, or instant bingo tickets. The rules and regulations are strict for operators, but players can easily find bingo games and raffles to enter.
In 2013 Delaware legalized the use of slot machines and video poker machines in some veterans clubs in the state. The organization had to have been in existence for at least 75 years, the state takes 40% of the revenue, and at least 60% of the organization’s share of the proceeds must go to a state approved charity organization.
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Strictly speaking, Delaware is probably the most liberal state in of gambling with the only exception being that the casinos are tied to racetracks within the state. Delaware and New Jersey are tied for most liberal, because in a somewhat similar way, New Jersey casinos are only permitted in Atlantic City. Other than that, they have absolutely everything, including full-on legalized and regulated online casinos. That makes them different from Nevada as does the fact that they have a lottery.
