West Virginia Sports Betting Regulations
Residents now have so many options for legal sports betting in West Virginia that it is normal to have questions. With the state choosing to regulate sports gambling, residents have additional options for wagering on their favorite sports teams. Legal West Virginia sports betting can be done through multiple methods – state-licensed sportsbooks, state-licensed online sportsbooks, or online offshore sports betting sites. The way we see it, there are no state laws that prevent the use of online offshore sportsbooks. The state has legalized sports betting and there are no provisions to exclude offshore books. Without these specific pieces of legislation in place, legal sports betting in West Virginia at online sportsbooks is viable. To further clear up any concerns, lawmakers have authorized both internet and mobile wagering in the state.
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To help make finding legal West Virginia sports betting sites easier, we’ve gone ahead and narrowed down the field to the best potential candidates. These sites allow players from all over West Virginia to play at their sites. There are no sign-up fees and you’ll have more options at these legal West Virginia sports betting sites than you’d find anywhere else in the US, including a local sportsbook or one in Vegas. Everything you need to know about finding a safe, reliable online sportsbook that accepts WV residents is right here on this page. We explore and explain the legality of it all, as well as answer any questions you might have about legal West Virginia Sports Betting.
Can We Now Legally Bet On Sports In West Virginia?
If you follow the news at all, you are already aware that PASPA was overturned on May 14th, 2018. As the West Virginia Legislature had passed a preemptive sports betting law, residents can now legally bet on sports in W.V. With sports betting officially kicking off on September 1st at Hollywood Casino, the opportunities for legal sports gambling in West Virginia only continue to increase. Of course, residents can also continue to use sites like BetOnline and 5Dimes for the best odds and bigger bonuses.
If you live in West Virginia and enjoy betting on sports over the Internet, we have good news. Legal West Virginia sports betting can be done online through any computer or smartphone. West Virginia has online sportsbooks that are based in the state. Not only that, WV residents should feel confident that they are well within their legal rights when placing any type of bet at an online sportsbook that accepts American players. The online action you’ll find at any of the legal West Virginia Sports Betting sites recommended on this page is better than anything you’d find stateside.
West Virginia legalized sports betting in March 2018, and the law became active with the SCOTUS decision in May. The WV Lottery Commission, which regulates the industry, got right to work drafting rules for casinos and suppliers. They indicated a desire to approve operations in time for the 2018-19 NFL season, a goal they ultimately met. Chapter 61-10-4 of West Virginia law defines the act of “playing or betting” on any popular casino games or future events as a misdemeanor. That’s all the bad news. If one were to be convicted of this crime, the punishment is a fine that ranges from $5 to $100 and up to one year of probation. Federal Sports Betting Laws. Until very recently, there were three primary federal sports betting laws that affected the way West Virginia gambling destinations could do business. The Wire Act of 1961 prohibits sports betting across state lines, nominally to curb mafia-related interstate numbers games.
Sports Betting Laws in West Virginia
The sports betting laws in West Virginia are very straightforward and easy to find. WV HB 415 is the only West Virginia sports betting law that you need to know. Passed on March 3, 2018, the law legalizes sports wagering on professional and collegiate sports, including college teams based in WV. States like NJ and DE have banned betting on local college teams, so WV residents have a leg up in this regard. The law also approves mobile and internet sports betting as well. You can also find details on licensure, fees, and other regulatory standards within the law.
There has never been any record of someone going to jail for online sports betting in West Virginia. In fact, there are now West Virginia sports betting laws that authorize mobile and other platforms for digital wagering. On the federal level, sports betting laws only apply to those who are either illegally running an online/land-based sportsbook, or those who are accepting the wagers. There is nothing in the state or federal penal code that makes online sports betting unlawful for West Virginia residents.
Bovada is a sportsbook we have long followed for their quality. Bovada provides its players with quite a few options for gambling, covering as many possible sports as they can. Entertainment, such as TV and film, as well as politics are also covered. Each of these options has made Bovada into one of the more enjoyable locations for gambling. If you decide to play with Bovada, you will find easy deposits by way of Bitcoin, VISA, Mastercard, and American Express. They have various deposit bonuses, including a 50% matching bonus for up to $250. For a limited time, until October 1, you can get a 50% matching bonus for up to $1,000 to celebrate the new football season. Just enter the promo code BVNFL1000 if you are betting on NFL games or BVNCAAF1000 if you are betting on college football. Through Bovada you never have to worry about being ripped off or otherwise damaged, as this is one of the most secure gambling sites around.
BetOnline is another of the most famous betting sites we have ever seen. They provide their users with quite a few advantages, including a 50% match to $1,000 - the largest deposit bonus ever introduced into a sportsbook. BetOnline bets on over 8 different sports, with the moneyline, spread, and total score bet available on each betting line. BetOnline has easy deposits with such methods as Bitcoin, Ethereum, prepaid cards, VISA, Mastercard, and wire transfers. BetOnline is simply the most generous betting sites we have ever seen, offering odds that pay even higher than most other sportsbooks.
The fans here in West Virginia know that betting on their favorite and hometown teams on MyBookie is a huge come up. There is so much money that can be made. The age requirement just to sign up for a MyBookie account is 18 and older. The banking methods are so easy to use and there a few listed that players can use. With the bonuses offered as well, there is no way that players not having any money or free plays on their accounts. Having an account here with Mybookie is the best idea and all it takes is for players to take a few minutes out of their day to create one.
The thing about betting on these teams is that there is always a risk. The bigger the risk, the more money that players can make. There are so many different betting options on SportsBetting and the features here are made just for the players that have accounts. There are also bonuses that SportsBetting offers and these are just a few things that they offer for players to keep them to continue to come back. The age requirement for players to sign up here is 18 and older. Once you have an account, all the games and features like live betting and mobile betting will be there for you to make money off of!
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There are a couple of federal laws that impact sports betting in West Virginia. We can start with the oldest law, the Wire Act of 1961. If you’re wondering why you can’t just call a sportsbook located in Nevada from West Virginia and use that or just log on to one of Nevada’s online sportsbooks, it’s actually because of the Wire Act. The Wire Act states that it is unlawful for someone to take a wager over a wire of communication. This prevents wagers from being taken over state lines and keeps legal West Virginia sports betting limited to state-licensed sportsbooks and apps.
There is a final sports betting law that you should be aware of, but rather than preventing any activities, it serves as a banking regulation. This law is called the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, UIGEA. What this law tries to do is prevent businesses from taking wagers and processing transactions from US players online, but it only succeeds in half of that. The UIGEA does not have the authority to dictate what overseas businesses do or don’t do. So they can’t prevent online, offshore sportsbooks from taking bets from West Virginia residents.
What this law can do is prevent banks from processing deposits to online sports betting sites. So occasionally, you might have a declined credit card payment or wire transfer. This doesn’t mean you’re doing anything illegal – the great thing about all three of these laws is that betting is not actually unlawful – it just means you need to find a different deposit method that doesn’t have to be processed by a bank. The law is also only applicable to unregulated sites, which means that state-run apps are not impacted by the UIGEA.
In West Virginia, the legal sports betting age is 21. The state has an overarching law that dictates 21 as the legal gambling age in the state. This is important to remember, as most online sports betting sites only require you to be 18 to sign up. While you can technically sign up at that age, we recommend that you wait until the state proscribed legal betting age or else face legal consequences.
Yes. When you use any of the online sportsbooks that are based in West Virginia or any of our highly recommended online offshore sportsbooks, you are legally able to bet on sports on your smartphone (or tablet). These sites are the exact same ones you’re accessing on your computer, they’ve just been modified to fit on a smaller, mobile device. Mobile sports betting in West Virginia is legal, fun, and convenient.
Generally, online sportsbooks will have tons of different wager types available. Some have more than others, especially if they’re more established and have been operating for a long time. The most common wager types you’ll see are parlay cards, moneylines, spreads, totals, adjusted lines, props, and futures. You might also find round robins, if-bets, Asian handicaps, and more. Some sportsbooks even have what is called live betting, as well.
Live In Game Sports Betting In West Virginia
Live betting is a method of betting on the game as it is in progress. Moneylines, spreads, and totals, as well as player and team props, can be made on the game while it is going. This puts you closer to the action and really gives you a chance to show off your sports betting skills.
West Virginia Sports Betting Legislation
Will West Virginia Regulate Sports Betting at the State Level?
West Virginia state legislators have already legalized sports betting at the state level. It was among one of the first states to do so after the Supreme Court ruling on PASPA. The state regulates sports betting at existing racetrack casinos and the casino within the historic Greenbrier Hotel. West Virginia also offers a state-regulated mobile sports betting app, but it has experienced technical difficulties in the past.
Are There Any Sportsbooks At Tribal Casinos In West Virginia?
Currently, there is no legal sports betting in West Virginia Tribal casinos or any other land-based structure. This is due to federal restrictions like PASPA. If federal law is repealed or amended, you should expect to see sportsbooks in both tribal and commercial casinos.
Can I Trust West Virginia Sports Betting Sites?
All of the current casinos and racinos in West Virginia are legally authorized to offer sports betting. There are four racetrack-casinos in the state and one casino. All five destinations are poised to offer full-scale sports wagering on NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and NCAA sporting events. Here are the places where you can bet on sports in West Virginia:
- Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races
- Mardi Gras Casino and Resort Cross Lanes
- Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack and Resort
- Wheeling Island Hotel
- The Casino Club at The Greenbrier
Can I Trust West Virginia Sports Betting Sites?
Yes, you can fully trust online sportsbooks that accept West Virginia residents, especially if they are the ones recommended on this page. We scoured the internet looking for the absolute best legal West Virginia sports betting sites available, ones with the best reputations and the most to offer. Online sportsbooks use SSL encryption technology to keep your information safe. They must also answer to a gaming commission, which holds them to high-quality standards to maintain their licensing.
Well, there is no professional sports teams in West Virginia at this time. In fact, there are only a few college teams that anyone really hears about. They are the West Virginia Mountaineers and the Marshall Thundering Herd. Other than that, there is not going to be a whole lot of betting on the home team because teams are limited in the state. Luckily, offshore online sportsbooks provide the latest betting odds on every team and popular sport you can think of.
West Virginia was the first state to pass a truly comprehensive sports betting omnibus: HB415, or the West Virginia Lottery Sports Wagering Act of 2018 (aka Article 22D of the West Virginia Code). This West Virginia sports betting law was signed into effect on March 3, 2018, about six weeks before the Supreme Court formally overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA, 1992), which prevented sports betting from being available legally inside WV state borders.
Introduced to the state congress as HB 415, Article 22D establishes everything from which agency will oversee sports betting in the state and how much its licensees will pay in fees and taxes to what forms of wagering will be allowed and where WV residents can go to place their bets. Because of the complete nature of this single piece of legislation, West Virginia is set up to be one of the very first states to offer legal on-site sports betting to its nearly two million residents and countless visitors to the state.
The most pressing concern that most potential WV sports bettors have when it comes to state-legalized athletics wagering is what exactly the West Virginia sports betting law allows. The short version is that it allows sports betting on pretty much anything you want (including amateur events like NCAA football and the Olympics to professional NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL games, and more). In other words, sports betting is legal in West Virginia, full-stop.
The only caveat is that any West Virginia sportsbooks operator or bookmaker has to fully abide by the terms of Article 22D. The following section of the law begins laying out those terms, and you can be sure that applicants are lining up to get a piece of this multi-billion-dollar pie.
West Virginia Code §29-22D-6 clarifies that all West Virginia sports betting businesses are state-owned, meaning that bookmakers are technically “private operators” of a governmental service. Further, this section indicates that at the rollout of WV sports betting services, only five (5) such operator licenses will be awarded statewide. (Note: A licensee may operate several wagering locations under a single license, and if the WV Lottery itself becomes a licensee – or has an exemption – it is conceivable that electronic sports betting kiosks could be made available in convenience stores at gas stations and other common lottery ticket vendor locations statewide.)
The cost to become a licensed sports betting operator in WV is $100,000 (renewable at that price every five years), and it restricts the locations of on-site sports betting sites primarily to racetracks and established, historic hotel-casinos in the state. Licensees must also be bonded and make available to the state office space for auditing services. Further, they must all keep adequate cash on hand to cover all sports betting payouts on any given day.
West Virginia Code §29-22D-11 and §29-22D-12 lay out all the customer service and facility rules that licensed operators must abide by, including mandated postings of house rules and financial obligations of both houses and patrons, systems to monitor wagering irregularities, prevention of any patron or employee from tampering with betting systems, and so on.
The West Virginia sports betting law bans a number of things. Primarily banned are licensees that have criminal records or those who are guilty of some violation of various “moral turpitude” standards in the financial or gambling industries. These license prohibitions are thoroughly covered in §29-22D-10.
Individual bettors may also be banned from any WV sports betting facility per the terms of §29-22D-15, though this is at the operator’s discretion. However, all banned persons must be accounted for in operators’ logs, and these bans are nominally permanent (albeit an appeal system seems to be in place). Further, anyone banned from one West Virginia sports betting location is banned from all West Virginia sports betting activity throughout the state.
When it comes to what the West Virginia sports betting law omits, it is remarkably coherent, concise, and complete. There are no blatant or obvious oversights in the text of HB 415, and most of the legislation is explained adequately for the layman.
The bill covers licensing, player rights, player exclusions, illegal gambling definitions, financial allocations, tax rates, and law enforcement, among several other topics. In short, there is no obvious loophole for an unlicensed bookmaker to get away with running his business “legally” in the state.
The only real “omission” in the bill is that it doesn’t address West Virginia’s main competition in the sports betting realm: legal offshore sportsbooks that have been serving the state for years. Of course, that is probably outside of the purview of the WV state government, but later variations of this bill (or new laws, particularly federal laws) could address these Internet betting shops in the future.
West Virginia residents have been using online, overseas sports betting sites for over 20 years now (Bovada, SportsBetting, BetOnline, etc.), and those companies share hundreds of thousands of clients from the Mountain State. The question of how legal offshore sportsbooks will be affected by federal law and West Virginia sports betting law, then, is an apt one, and it is a natural cause for concern for all the gamers who have their wagering funds tied up in other countries.
Fortunately, there is not any prohibition in HB 415 (Article 22D), as the bill makes it explicitly clear that only unlicensed state-based bookmakers would be in violation of the law (§29-22D-20). As with federal anti-gambling laws, individuals placing bets with unlicensed or illegal operators are not guilty of any crime. And because offshore sportsbooks operate outside of WV and US jurisdiction, they are not bound by these laws, so you remain free to use such services. Other laws may be introduced that ban WV residents from frequenting such sites, but there is no such law established in Article 22D.
The biggest hurdle facing each state in their efforts to force mass adoption of their area sports wagering services has to do with how the states choose to tax the industry. Taxation and fees in the West Virginia sports betting law are covered throughout HB 415, primarily in §29-22D-16 and §29-22D-17. Here are the key points outlined in these sections:
The most important financial point is this: Licensees will be charged a 10% tax on their “adjusted gross sports wagering receipts.” This is a fancy way of saying that, for the privilege of operating a sportsbook, the West Virginia sports betting law demands 1/10th of the house take on all sports bets. This is referred to as a “privilege tax.” This privilege tax will be collected on a weekly basis, and operators will be able to carry over net losses as a deductible from the next week’s take.
Fortunately, the privilege tax replaces all other tax liabilities that the sportsbook would otherwise carry, with the exception of property taxes. What these other taxes constitute (and how their values figure into alleviating the large hit of the privilege tax rate) is currently unknown. However, use taxes and sales taxes are not included in the mandatory 10% privilege tax, which will hopefully give low-margin WV sportsbooks a bit of a reprieve.
The only problems with the West Virginia sports betting law are the same that all states’ laws will face in the wake of the PASPA overturn: taxation rates. Unlike other casino games, sports betting bookmakers do not have enormous house takes. They turn by far the highest handle, but most of that is paid back out in winnings. In other words, sportsbooks have a small profit margin (6-9% is considered above average), and a high taxation rate can literally kill their business before it ever gets off the ground.
The West Virginia sports betting law pegs the privilege tax at 10% while working in some deductions, but this may not be enough to keep traditional sports betting moneylines reasonable. For example, a book in Las Vegas might only pay 6.75% of their take in taxes, and – because the sportsbooks there are tied to massively more lucrative casino games and slots – they can eat that with relative ease. Such may not be the case when you’re wagering at a horse track in West Virginia, however, and a 10% rate on the take could simply be too high.
Thus, where Vegas or an online sportsbook can give you a -110 moneyline on the Mountaineers to cover, you might have to pay -120 to place that same bet in WV. Whether or not this would be enough to turn new players away towards better, more economical solutions like legal offshore sportsbooks remains to be seen. However, all the hundreds of thousands of WV bettors that already use these services are unlikely to switch their books to a local vendor with those built-in losses on the line. Convenience is king, yes. But cash is also king. And historically, cash is the king of the hill.
How old does the West Virginia sports betting law say I have to be to bet?
Sports Betting Virginia
To bet on sports at on-site WV books, the West Virginia sports betting law says you have to be at least 21 years old. However, you only have to be 18 in order to wager at legal offshore sportsbooks (Bovada et al.).
Will I be arrested for using a legal offshore sportsbook instead of a local licensed bookmaker?
Absolutely not. The West Virginia sports betting law – HB 415 – has no provisions for the arrest of any resident who uses a legal offshore sportsbook instead of a local licensed bookmaker.
What does the West Virginia sports betting law say about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency?
The West Virginia sports betting law says nothing about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, though this doesn’t mean that such payment options will not be accepted going forward. However, all major online, offshore betting sites already accept a variety of cryptos, including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum.
Do I have to pay taxes on my winnings when I bet on sports in WV?
Yes. While it is unclear if your winnings will be taxed as income before any West Virginia sportsbook pays out your funds (as is the case in Nevada), you will have to pay income tax (or some other variety of gains tax) on your winnings, as these will be reported to the IRS by your sportsbook. The same is true even if you use offshore sportsbooks, although in that case, you will be wholly responsible for claiming any income via such sites (as they are not obligated to file any documentation with the IRS).
Does the West Virginia sports betting law include mobile wagering?
Yes! Mobile sports betting is recognized as the number-one driving force for the entire sports betting industry, and the West Virginia sports betting law has several provisions allowing operator licensees the ability to provide online and mobile betting solutions for WV residents. Whether or not any official Apple or Android apps will be available for your iPhone or Android phone remains to be seen, but mobile betting via your handset’s or tablet’s browser is going to be a critical component of WV’s sports betting strategy.
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