Minnesota sports betting legalization coming in 2025?

Minnesota inches closer to legalizing sports betting, with new legislation proposed to benefit tribes, tracks, charities and youth sports.

Only an even dozen U.S. states have not legalized sports betting since a May 2018 landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling struck down a 26-year-old federal law that had given Nevada a virtual monopoly on the gambling industry. Many of the “holdout states” do not appear even to be interested in authorizing such activity.

An exception is Minnesota, where a number of lawmakers have tried – but not yet succeeded – to add the new form of betting to the list of options for state residents and visitors.

After a last-minute push as the state legislative session ended in late May, Rep. Zack Stephenson posted a message on X (formerly known as Twitter) indicating: “We’re going to come up just short on the sports betting bill this year. But in the last few days we proved that we could find a deal that all the major stakeholders could live with. Tribes, tracks, charities… That’s meaningful progress that can be a foundation for the future.”

The Stephenson-backed bill would have given the state’s 11 native American tribes exclusive authority on sports betting in the state, with sportsbooks at their casinos and with mobile betting platforms for consumer smartphones. The tax on net revenue from the latter wagering would be 22% – a moderate total in the industry.

Of the projected $88 million that would be raised, nearly half would go to charitable gaming entities, 15% to the state’s two horse racing tracks, a like amount to the tribes, 10% for funding of problem gambling programs, and the rest to go toward attracting major national sporting events to the state and to funding youth sports activities.

Betting would have its limits in the state

Along with giving so many interested parties new-found funding, the bill also would prohibit “prop bets” – such as speculating on how many points a player would score in a basketball game – on collegiate events. That issue otherwise would have been a dealbreaker for a handful of state elected officials.

“I think there was a lot of skepticism that at the end of the day you could find a deal that the tribes and the tracks could both support, and we believe we’re there,” Stephenson told media in May.  “It’s a major accomplishment, and I think it sets the stage for future action. Now we know that the deal is there to be had.”

The Sports Betting Alliance, which lobbies for gaming industry giants FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM and Fanatics, issued a hopeful statement.

“We appreciated the spirit and hard work of the stakeholders of working together to legalize sports betting this past session,” the statement read. “When we renew the effort again in 2025, we hope to have further progress on limiting the illegal market.”

A look ahead at the Minnesota sports betting legalization effort

The Minnesota legislative session resumes in January, and the results of the November election could make the push to legalize sports betting forward or backward, depending on who wins the various races for seats. A number of states have followed the pattern that may be duplicated in Minnesota – a fevered pitch to pass a sports betting bill late in a legislative session, only to have a handful of undecided lawmakers hold up the process as they seek specific additions to the bill. That sets the stage for compromise during the time frame when the statehouse is dormant.

This year was the closest that sports betting proponents in the Legislature have come in the six years of trying to legalize the endeavor. The Minnesota statehouse is almost exactly evenly split between liberals and conservatives, which has complicated numerous efforts to pass bills because of that fragile political split.

Influential Republican Rep. Pat Garofalo, of Farmington told Minnesota TV station Kare11 that the sports betting effort mirrored that of the star-crossed Minnesota Vikings NFL team, which has not won any of the 57 Super Bowls in spite of four appearances in the game in the 1960s and 1970s and a number of more recent winning teams that also ultimately failed.

“It’s like in classic Minnesota sports fashion, we were up by a touchdown with two minutes left, and we had the ball, and we turned it over,” Garofalo told the station. “The bad guys scored, and it went into overtime. We missed a field goal and now it’s – you know, it’s done.”

All four states that border Minnesota – Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota – are legalized sports betting states. The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul – by far the most populous cities in the state – are located not far from the Wisconsin border. But sports betting is only legal in Wisconsin at the state’s tribal casinos, which lessens the pressure on Minnesota lawmakers to legalize sports betting to avoid having significant spending by residents who wind up going out-of-state.

Lawmakers in a number of U.S. states have only been able to succeed in expanding legal forms of gambling when it is clear that in-state residents are crossing the border to gamble.