As a lawmaker in a state where sports betting remains illegal, Oklahoma Sen. Bill Coleman wondered what all the fuss was about. So, a few years ago, the Kay County legislator hopped in his car before the NFL playoffs and drove north to see for himself.
“The state of Kansas, that’s where I made my first sports bet,” Coleman (R-Ponca City) told colleagues during an interim study on sports gambling in October. “I drove a little ways to Kansas and made a bet that was whether (Cincinnati Bengals quarterback) Joe Burrow would rush for more than 50 yards in the AFC conference championship. (…) I kept the ticket because it showed me that there was an entertainment aspect to sports betting. Watching the game was a completely different experience having that sports ticket.”
In Coleman’s eyes, Oklahoma loses money to nearby states that allow sports gambling both in retail settings like casinos and through phone apps like FanDuel. While Oklahomans can legally buy all of the lottery tickets they can afford and can play slot machines at 30-plus tribal casinos until their arms fall off, they can’t bet on sports.
If Coleman and some other legislators get their way, that would change in the 2026 session, which starts Feb. 2. But as interested observers place their bets on such a major proposition, odds seem long that Gov. Kevin Stitt would sign a deal palatable to Oklahoma’s largest tribal casino interests.
“With the current relationship between tribal leaders and the executive branch, it would be very hard to see anything come to fruition this session,” said House Appropriations and Budget Committee Chairman Trey Caldwell (R-Lawton).
Thunder exec: Betting would help team ‘remain competitive’
Three bills legalizing sports betting were advanced through their chamber of origin last year and sit ready for consideration this session, although their road remains long to achieve final action.
“These are available to be used once an agreement is made,” Coleman said Monday. “They could be altered — more than likely, I would say, they’d be altered — but they’re available to use.”
Authored by Coleman and Rep. Ken Luttrell, HB 1047 would allow tribal nations to submit a sports betting supplement to their existing Model Tribal Gaming Compact agreements with the state. Requiring a 10 percent exclusivity fee paid to the state on “adjusted transaction total” revenue, HB 1077 would create a simple path for sports betting to be offered at the roughly 130 casinos in Oklahoma.
Authored by Coleman and Luttrell as well, SB 585 would also legalize sports betting in the Model Tribal Gaming Compact at the current stair-stepped exclusivity fee rates of 4 percent to 6 percent. But the version of SB 585 that passed the Senate last session would also let the Horse Racing Commission “issue one license to conduct event wagering” to the Oklahoma City Thunder, which would “have the right to sublicense the event wagering license to one tribal-approved operator for mobile and in-person event wagering on non-tribal land.” All gross revenues would be “shared with all tribal entities” that have entered into the Model Tribal Gaming Compact.
“We’re still hoping there’s an agreement to be had somehow,” Coleman said Monday while acknowledging Stitt’s general opposition to the bills he filed last year. “If we do send something his way, we’ll probably do so with enough votes to overturn a veto, should he want to do that. But that’s if it goes that far.”
Meanwhile, Luttrell and Coleman are also the authors of HB 1101, which contains the same proposal as HB 1047 but would send the issue to state voters — an option that would let the Legislature work around Stitt during his final year in office.
“These bills represent a balanced approach, ensuring both tribal and public interests are served,” Luttrell (R-Ponca City) said last session when his House bills were introduced. “By legalizing sports betting, we’re not only creating new opportunities but also capturing revenue from millions of dollars that are currently being bet illegally or out of state. This means Oklahoma will benefit from those funds, which will help strengthen our economy and provide additional resources for critical services.”
Nearly 40 states have already adopted some form of sports betting since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling that struck down a prohibition on the practice. As a result, Luttrell, Coleman and other Oklahoma officials fear the state is missing out on lucrative tax revenues. Neighboring Kansas and Missouri have legalized sports betting in recent years, and Texas is also considering a similar move.
Sports Betting Alliance chief operating officer Frank Sizemore told legislators during the October interim study that Oklahoma is missing out on benefits that other states now enjoy.
“The main reasons that states legalize are to increase tax revenue,” Sizemore said. “Missouri was losing bettors to the Kansas side. Sports betting is in 39 states and contributes a total economic impact of $325 billion and close to 2 million jobs. There are 3 million people in Oklahoma who are 21-plus. That would mean about $200 to $400 million (in revenue) at maturity. That’s dependent on the illegal market and how quickly you can get ramped up. That number does assume a commercially competitive market. There are a few states with a monopoly market. Those underperform other markets where you have competitive commercial operators.”
The Sports Betting Alliance is made up of companies like FanDuel and MGM, which are already in the sports betting space through mobile phone apps. Sizemore said sports betting is already happening within Oklahoma’s borders, but the state’s coffers see no benefit from such illegal bets.
“It’s just happening illegally with illegal platforms and with bookies,” he told legislators.
Sizemore said those bets are not protected by laws, and there is no guarantee a neighborhood bookie will pay out prizes to those who win their bets. He said legal sports betting entities operate on thin margins, meaning they are losing out as well when there illegal betting occurs.
“They have no regulators, no taxes and no accountability,” he said. “And there’s no jurisdiction because many of the servers are placed offshore. It’s difficult to shut down, and the only way to shut it down is to create a legal framework.”
As legal wagering grows, sports leagues themselves have gotten into the action. Any NFL television broadcast is bound to include ads for FanDuel or MGM, which hope to lure fans into betting on whether their team will win, or if a star player will meet individual yardage thresholds. In some cases, fans can place bets during games.
Will Syring, who serves as the Oklahoma City Thunder’s vice president for corporate sponsorships, signaled the team is ready for the state to embrace sports betting even as the NBA grapples with the fallout of an FBI gambling investigation that has led to the arrest of at least two former players.
“Why is an NBA team up here talking about sports gambling? Our goal is to keep the conversation going,” Syring told legislators in October. “It’s very important for us to remain competitive on and off the court and to keep up with our peers.”
Syring said legalizing sports betting in Oklahoma would help the team’s bottom line, which in turn would help it to remain among the league’s best. The Thunder won last year’s NBA championship and are hoping for a repeat this season.
“In these states that have legalized sports betting, where they are regulated, these teams are taking advantage of sometimes, licenses, which we won’t be able to take advantage of in Oklahoma because the tribes have exclusivity, which we respect and honor. But in each one, you have sponsorships of many of these teams, and sponsorships drive revenue for the clubs. That’s my role to oversee that. We don’t have the ability to have those sponsorships, and it’s important for us to have that,” Syring said. “Why else do the Thunder care? First and foremost, we have to maintain a competitive balance across the league, not only on the court but off of it. We’re always looking for ways to maximize revenue for the team. We run a business. So when an opportunity comes up where we’re not making money, we want to talk about that because our peers are making money in this category. They are making money from sponsorships.”
Syring said sports betting would provide the Thunder with other ways to add to their collection of revenue streams, such as the potential for sports wagering facilities or zones to be added adjacent to the new OKC arena being built downtown.
“It’s the diversification of revenue streams. It’s not just hot dogs and foam fingers and tickets,” he said. “We have to survive, and we have to thrive, and we will have a brand new venue that will help us do that. But adding sports betting and legalizing sports betting in our state will really help us remain competitive.”
Stitt on sports betting: ‘It’s horrible’
On the same day of Coleman and Luttrell’s interim study about legalizing sports wagering in Oklahoma, federal law enforcement unsealed a pair of indictments Oct. 23 involving current and former professional basketball players.
One indictment accused 31 defendants — including Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and former NBA player Damon Jones — of allegedly rigging illegal poker games “to cheat victims out of millions of dollars.” The other charged six people — including NBA player Terry Rozier — with a “wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy for their alleged roles in a scheme to use inside information from NBA players and coaches to profit from illegal betting activity.”
The latest in a long list of gambling scandals affecting professional and collegiate athletics, the Rozier scandal underscored concern that legal, widespread sports wagering carries a variety of social problems. And in a casino-heavy state where gambling debts routinely lead to the theft of public or private money, not every Oklahoman is in a hurry to legalize a new form of the habit.
For starters, Gov. Kevin Stitt has proposed his own framework as the push to legalize sports wagering moves forward, but he has a negative opinion of gambling overall.
“It’s horrible,” Stitt said during an interview last fall. “If I had my way, I wouldn’t have gambling at all. It’s a travesty.”
Stitt criticized the State-Tribal Gaming Act, which 59.5 percent of voters approved in 2004 after the Legislature put it on a statewide ballot. Claiming voters were misled two decades ago by arguments about horse racing and “bonanza-style bingo,” Stitt said Oklahomans “would never pass what we have today” and could not have foreseen having 130 casinos in the state.
“Oklahomans thought, ‘Well, yeah, Indians had bingo. Remember, they had bingo back in the day?’” Stitt said.
As he begins his final year of a gubernatorial tenure that has been adversarial at best with influential tribal nations, Stitt is reiterating a position he outlined in 2023: If Oklahoma is to to legalize sports betting, it should offer a comprehensive, free-market approach where any individual could open a sports book, not just sovereign tribal nations that currently remit revenues to the state in exchange for exclusive Class III gaming rights.
“We know what they charge in California. We know what they charge in New York. You know what they charge in Pennsylvania. You know what they charge in New Jersey. I’ve done the research on that, and we can charge $500,000 to give the commercial license,” Stitt said. “Anybody that wants to set up a sports book across the state of Oklahoma can do it if they pay $500,000, and then it’s a free market. You do it, you go for it. And then [it would be] $100,000 every year, annually, to renew that license. So, in other words, that’s going to keep a lot of people out of that.”
Under Stitt’s proposal, the state would “tax” sports book revenue at 15 percent.
“There are some states that get 50 percent of the profit. Can you believe that? It’s still profitable,” Stitt said. “So is my job as governor to give away a monopoly to whoever funds a campaign? Or is my job to maximize for the taxpayers of Oklahoma? Well, that’s a rhetorical question, of course. My job is to do the best job I can for Oklahoma with limited government, and the free-market approach is the best approach to do.”
While Americans love to gamble on sports, many see it as a problem for their culture. A Pew Research poll earlier in 2025 found that 43 percent of adults consider sports betting “a bad thing” for society. Three years ago, 34 percent believed that. Moreover, about 40 percent of respondents said legal wagering is a bad thing for sports — a seven-point jump from Pew’s 2022 survey. Fewer than one in five respondents saw positive aspects to sports betting.
Former University of Oklahoma sports information director Kenny Mossman is among those who see legal gambling as a problem for sports. After spending decades helping to publicize the accomplishments of the Sooners’ sports teams, Mossman is now a minister who considers sports betting “a significant threat to college sports.”
“I don’t think that’s a good thing,” Mossman said. “My biggest concern with more than 30 years in college athletics is the integrity of the game. The concern that I have is that the lines become so blurred that the gambling and the sports become indistinguishable from each other.”
Stitt also shares concerns about how the expansion of sports betting might impact college athletics in Oklahoma. Under any proposal he would support, Stitt said there would need to be certain restrictions on proposition bets — wagers on specific in-game outcomes beyond final scores.
“The other thing that we did is I talked to OU’s and [Oklahoma State University’s] athletic departments, and we limited the prop bets on OU and OSU in this plan,” Stitt said. “The reason that’s important — and you can talk to the athletic directors that personally told me — it puts too much pressure on a [college athlete]. If, in other words, their college buddies and their fraternity brothers can just say, ‘Hey, dude, all you have to do is miss the first free throw in the fourth quarter if you get to the line,’ and, ‘Man, I’m so behind,’ and, ‘Blah, blah, blah, I just lost $500 to my bookie.’ We can’t have that type of pressure on a college student to have their buddies, or worse yet, some Bruno coming over and intimidating these guys to do that.'”
In many ways, Mossman said he believes the proliferation of sports betting has outpaced the education of college athletes about its pitfalls. With the practice now mainstream and ubiquitous across sports broadcasts and media companies, Mossman considers that another threat to college athletics.
“I think it plays out in any number of scenarios,” Mossman said. “For years, it was back-room and taboo to have any form of gambling in sports. It was recognized as a clear threat when it came to the outcome of games. I’ve been out of it for four years, but the basis of education during my time, when it came to gambling, no matter what form it took, was to stay away from gambling.”
Beyond mere questions about the integrity of competition, sports gambling addiction has been steadily on the rise since 2018. A study from the Journal of the American Medical Association released in 2025 found a dramatic uptick in gambling addiction. With the introduction of retail sports betting, the number of internet searches for gambling addiction help rose by 33 percent during the months before online sportsbooks were launched. When those online sportsbooks became available, the number of searches ballooned to a 61 percent increase, which researchers found to be a greater and more sustained increase that has persisted for years.
Sports gambling sites like FanDuel and MGM have invested in educating participants about the potential pitfalls of addiction, Sizemore told legislators.
“There are very robust, responsible gaming measures that are on these platforms,” Sizemore told legislators. “I only have one app that I use because it causes friction. Once you get committed to an app, you tend to stick with it because it can be tiresome to link bank accounts and other personal information. I prefer one app and have stuck to that. I think a lot of bettors do that. Early on, there were promo chasers, and that has diminished to some extent. You see more people committed to one app. And there are tools in each platform that track your spend and timeout restrictions. There are all kinds of educational resources embedded into the platforms to try and minimize gaming addiction.”
FanDuel director of government relations Ryan Mindell told legislators in the October interim study session that the platform is committed to educating users on the dangers of addiction and provides resources to mitigate that risk.
“FanDuel is committed to creating a safe gaming experience for customers across all of our products,” he told lawmakers. “There are individuals who are at risk and who will face challenges with problem gambling. We take this issue very seriously. We promote responsible and informed play through in-app communications and tools designed to protect our customers.”
Tribes, lottery officials interested but cautious
With casino gaming creating valuable revenue streams for most sovereign tribal nations headquartered here, gambling is already big business in Oklahoma.
Large casinos in southern Oklahoma draw thousands of Texans across the Red River and a heavy chunk of the estimated $6.8 billion that flowed into the industry in 2023, according to a report from the National Indian Gaming Commission. Given that economic impact, tribal leaders are keenly interested in the potential impact of sports betting on their bottom line.
Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association executive director Matthew Morgan told legislators at the October interim study that “there are three legal operations” for gambling activities in the state: horse racing, the Oklahoma Lottery and tribal casino gaming. But he said the state is doing a poor job when it comes to prohibiting other gambling activity.
“Every other entity in this state is operating illegally. It’s widespread and concerning,” Morgan said. “We all know folks who want to game. And if we’re talking about sports betting, there are those who want to do that. Whether it’s going down the street with their friends to a local bookie or getting online on an illegal site, people are betting. We’re not prohibiting anything currently.”
Morgan noted a key provision in the state’s Model Tribal Gaming Compact: exclusivity fees. While federal law prohibits states from taxing tribal gaming operations, tribes can remit a flat or percentage-based fee to a state for the exclusive right to operate Class III gaming, such as slot machines, table games and sports wagering.
The Oklahoma Legislature authorized tribes to offer craps and roulette in a 2018 bill, the controversial passage of which occurred during the teacher walkout. But Stitt’s ill-fated attempt to reopen gaming compact negotiations the next year wrecked his relationship with leaders of large tribes, and his proposal to make a sports betting license available to anyone with $500,000 and a dream has irritated tribal stakeholders further.
Morgan said the state has a responsibility to live up to its agreement with tribes, no matter what form sports betting takes.
“If the state allows a breach of that compact, they will have to pay a penalty,” Morgan told legislators. “How do I know the state is receiving its proper share and the tribes are meeting all of its duties? Because within the act, it allows the state, through its gaming compliance unit, (to) perform visits, and the tribes are required to submit annual financial audits to the state. It’s a great working relationship. The state doesn’t participate in any of the financial risks within the gaming industry. There weren’t incentives to help it grow. The state made a promise that it would protect exclusivity in return for a share of the fees. In fact, the gaming compact even says it will support the validity of the legislation in the compacts — right there in back and white. And unfortunately, gentleman, this has been lacking. Tribal governments have had to defend direct attacks from state officials and the lack of enforcement on illegal gambling operations.”
Morgan said tribes would support the creation of sportsbooks at casinos, but within that concept, some issues would need to be resolved. He said tribes want to see what legal sports betting boundaries would look like in practice while also reigning in other threats to their industry, both from local bookies and illegal offshore gambling sites.
In August, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond urged the U.S. Department of Justice to rein in illegal offshore betting sites to protect consumers after what he called an “unprecedented spike” in activity.
“The growth of illegal offshore gambling markets poses a threat to Oklahomans and to hardworking people across the country,” Drummond wrote. “These companies deserve to be brought to justice under the fullest extent of the law.”
Morgan noted similar concerns in October while also emphasizing the exclusivity fee arrangement that allows the state to receive money from tribal casino operators in the first place.
“We want online sports gambling at casinos in return for exclusivity fees that make sense for our market,” he said. “We want to see sports betting legalized in Oklahoma. Where do the complexities come in? My members want to relay to you all that we continue to work toward a consensus model for the sports betting process. We don’t live in a vacuum. We recognize the threat of out-of-state competitors and illegal operators. I would ask that you help us ban those illegal operators. It’s a huge number of people operating in an illegal space with nothing being done about it.”
Legalizing online and retail sports betting could also cut into Oklahoma Lottery revenue, lawmakers were told. The lottery generated about $87.5 million in Fiscal Year 2024 for public education. Through scratch-offs and other products, including Powerball and Mega Millions, the lottery took in about $354 million during the same period.
Another bill still technically alive for the 2026 session — SB 164 by Sen. Casey Murdock (R-Felt) — would authorize the Lottery Commission to administer licenses and rules for sports betting. While sovereign tribal nations would be able to host in-person “sports pools” with approval from the governor and Legislature, “sports pool retailer” licenses would be available more broadly for in-person wagering. Much like the plan Stitt has proposed, the licenses would carry a 15 percent fee on adjusted gross revenues, but Murdock’s bill stalled in the Senate during last session’s initial committee work.
Oklahoma Lottery Commissioner Jay Finks told legislators during the October interim study that sports betting is not necessarily compatible with the state agency’s operating principles, even if the lottery does have potential infrastructure in place through its mobile app.
“With sports, there’s a live outcome with a game that has inherently more risk,” Finks said. “Can we participate? Yes, but it doesn’t exactly fit our model of managing risk and maximizing revenue to the state of Oklahoma. Secondly, it has been suggested that we could regulate sports to some degree. There are a few states, Maryland and Virginia are two of the best examples, that have regulated sports betting. They have some pros and cons. But mostly cons. It’s staff and administration-heavy, and you’re operating as an entity to regulate the people you are competing with. The reality is we are all competing for the gambling dollar. I don’t know if that is ideal in the grand scheme.”
