Esports betting is not legal or illegal across the USA as a whole. Since the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Murphy v. NCAA, each state decides whether to authorise sports betting at all, and where it does, an esports wager is legal only if that state’s regulator approves the event or wager type for a licensed sportsbook.

That second step is the one most answers skip. A state’s law authorises sports wagering; the regulator’s catalogue decides what a book can actually put on the board. For esports, the catalogue is where the real answer lives.

The federal obstacle to state-legal sports betting was a statute, and it no longer binds the states. The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) made it unlawful for a state to “license, or authorize by law” betting on competitive sporting events. On 14 May 2018 the Court held that PASPA’s ban on state authorisation violates the anticommandeering rule, per the opinion in Murphy v. NCAA, which this desk read on 8 October 2026.

The ruling legalised nothing by itself. It removed the federal bar on states authorising sports betting, and every state that has done so since wrote its own rules.

Which states allow esports betting? Read the catalogue, not the headline

The catalogue mechanism is clearest in Ohio. The Ohio Casino Control Commission’s Event and Wager Catalogue, read by this desk on 8 October 2026, sorts wagers into three classes:

  • Generally approved wagers need no specific sign-off if they meet every listed criterion: an event sanctioned by a sports governing body the Commission has approved, results provable by a box score or other statistical analysis, rostered or registered athletes, and an outcome “on the field of play (including the virtual field of play for eSports)”.
  • Specific approval wagers need the Executive Director’s sign-off, such as markets on awards voted on by officials, media or fans, and on drafts or combines.
  • Not approved wagers are barred outright, including props on individual NCAA athletes.

So Ohio’s rules plainly contemplate esports. What the page does not do, in the text this desk read, is name a specific esports title, league or governing body. In Ohio, the general-approval route runs through a sports governing body the Commission has approved, and that list did not appear on the page read.

Washington works differently. The state’s Authorized Sports Wagering Menu page, read on 8 October 2026, says the menu covers every league, organisation and wager type mutually agreed by the Tribal and State Gaming Agencies, and that each casino keeps its own list of wagers offered. The menu document itself was not read, so this post says nothing about whether it carries esports.

New Jersey’s Division of Gaming Enforcement publishes an approved events list as a PDF on nj.gov. The copy fetched in this run came back as an undecoded binary file, so its contents are not reported here.

Why there is no honest single number

Reference pages circulate a count of states that “explicitly permit” esports wagering. This desk could not tie that count to the regulators’ own documents, so it is not repeated here. New York’s and Louisiana’s regulator pages refused this desk’s automated requests; a refused page is not evidence of anything, either way.

For the sportsbook side of the same question, see this site’s piece on licensed books widening their esports menus. Two other layers get mixed up with this one. Prediction-market event contracts are a separate question from state sportsbook law, and the site’s Kalshi esports contract review covers who may trade one. And which esports publishers allow betting sponsors is about shirts and streams, not about what a bettor may legally wager.

FAQ

Can I bet on esports in the USA?

Only where your state allows sports betting and its regulator lets a licensed book offer that event. There is no single national yes. Ohio’s catalogue counts the virtual field of play for eSports as a field of play, but the page this desk read does not name an approved title, so the answer depends on the state and the match.

Staking apps and player-versus-player skill contests are not the same product as a sportsbook wager, and none of the regulator pages this desk read on 8 October 2026 addresses them. This post makes no claim either way. Anyone selling a staking product as the legal alternative to betting is selling something, and the claim deserves the same scrutiny as any other.

Where a state allows it, it runs through licensed sportsbooks, and in the US its legality is a state question. Since Murphy v. NCAA in 2018, states may authorise sports betting themselves; whether an esports match is bookable then depends on that state’s approved-event rules. The honest answer is yes in some places, no in others, and check the regulator.

This is an evergreen explainer, not news: the law moves state by state, so check your own regulator’s current catalogue before trusting any list, this one included. Nothing here is a recommendation to bet. If you do, keep it to books licensed in your state, at the legal age your state sets, with a budget fixed before the first map. Help is at begambleaware.org.