KY lawmakers OK raising sports betting age, legalizing more forms of gambling
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky lawmakers passed a bill to raise the sports betting age to 21 years old.
- The bill bans election betting and bars some prop bets on athletes from Kentucky schools.
- Additionally, the bill legalizes fantasy contests and allows fixed‑odds racetrack wagers.
State lawmakers passed a bill Wednesday raising the minimum age for sports betting in Kentucky from 18 to 21.
The bill also legalizes, regulates and taxes fantasy betting contests for the first time under the Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corporation and allows racetracks to offer fixed-odds wagers in addition to the current parimutuel wagering.
Fantasy betting and betting on horse racing, including slots-like games at racetrack betting parlors, would still be allowed at age 18.
The bill unanimously passed a Senate committee Wednesday morning before passing the full Senate and receiving concurrence from the House late Wednesday night.
The bill now goes to the desk of Gov. Andy Beshear to sign or veto it, or let it become law without his signature.
The legislature could override a potential veto from Beshear when lawmakers reconvene for the final two days of session April 14 and 15.
The bill — which previously passed the full Kentucky House in March — was amended slightly. Among the changes were a prohibition related to prediction market wagers: No existing licensee, including racetracks, would be able to offer prediction wagers.
But the bill stops short of banning them altogether — something bill sponsor Rep. Michael Meredith, R-Oakland, said was not possible given the current federal regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
One kind of prediction bet is banned, Meredith said: elections. The outcome of “any local, state, or federal election” is specifically off limits for betting.
The initial version of the legislation called for proposition wagers — so-called “prop bets” — on college athletes playing for Kentucky schools to be banned, but the House weakened that language before sending it to the Senate.
Now, the only prop bets that will be banned are those in which a successful bet outcome is contingent upon an athlete from a Kentucky school “failing to meet a specified statistical threshold or experiencing a negative performance outcome.” This indicates that prop bets on individual performance “overs” — such as an athlete scoring at least a certain number of points — would be permitted, while prop bets on individual performance “unders” wouldn’t be.
In October 2025, ESPN reported that a study commissioned by the NCAA during the 2024-25 academic year found sports-betting-related abuse to be one of the most common forms of online harassment targeted at college athletes, coaches and officials.
The House also added language to bar betting by those who are $500 or more behind in child support payments. Licensed online gaming operators, including those who offer sports wagering and fantasy contests, would have to continually verify that participants are not on a to-be-created arrearage registry.
Athletes, coaches, referees, officiants, trainers, team staff and other active participants in a sporting event or competition would be prohibited from participating in fantasy contests that include the sport they’re involved in, according to the legislation.
The bill also creates a task force to address issues over the summer with charitable gaming, said bill co-sponsor Rep. Matt Koch, R-Paris.
The Senate Licensing and Occupations Committee passed the bill unanimously, 10-0, Wednesday morning despite qualms expressed by some members.
Sen. Amanda Mays Bledsoe, R-Lexington, said she’d refused to let her son open a sports betting account when he turned 18.
Several senators expressed concerns about sports betting in general, but the bill appears to do little beyond raising the betting age to address what Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, said was “a genie ... out of a bottle.”
McDaniel said now that his children have become teenagers and are heading to college, he has become increasingly concerned.
“I now tell my sons that if you download one of these apps ... You’re a sucker. If you want to talk about a wealth transfer from those who can least afford it ... Unfortunately, it’s become this,” McDaniel said, holding up his cell phone. “Honestly, it’s made me dislike watching sports the way that I used to, because I feel like I’m watching a gambling show while a baseball game is going on. ... This bill combines a lot of very, very difficult choices, the question of constitutionality, the question of the evolution of gaming.”
Online gambling, especially sports betting, has become hugely popular among young men in particular since Kentucky legalized it in 2023. The top demographic placing calls to Kentucky’s Problem Gambling Hotline is young adults and teens.
David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation, a conservative group that has opposed any expansion of gambling in Kentucky for decades, spoke against the bill. Walls said the bill would lead to “further harms on Kentucky families.”
He said the bill “is unconstitutional, a bad deal for horse racing and bad for families... We’re grateful for raising the age limit to 21, but the reality is age limits mean nothing if no meaningful verification of that fact.”
In rebuttal, Meredith said licensed operators will be required to maintain stringent age-gating protections.
“The only place you will see underage betting is in the prediction market space, because they don’t have those restrictions in the federal space,” Meredith said.
According to survey results released by the NCAA in May 2023, 58% of 18-to-22-year-olds have engaged in at least one sports betting activity.
And according to that NCAA report, changing the legal age for sports wagering may not have much of an impact on the activity: “State legality and age restrictions do not pose much difficulty, as areas where betting is legal versus those where it is illegal have nearly the same rate of engagement,” the report said.
Following discussion, the bill passed out of the full Senate late Wednesday night with a 24-13 vote. Two attempts at a roll call vote were needed after a Senate floor amendment to the bill was found to be out of order.
Sponsored by Sen. Steve Rawlings, R-Burlington, that amendment would have banned the use of credit cards for any deposit or wager to bet. The amendment was out of order, and ultimately withdrawn, because it was drafted to the original bill and not to the substitute bill that emerged from the Senate Licensing and Occupations Committee.
The Senate’s discussion of the bill centered on the potential of the Kentucky Derby not being broadcast on national TV because a network airs ads for prediction markets, such as Kalshi or Polymarket.
Minority Floor Leader Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, described the potential of not being able to broadcast the Derby on national TV as “Like sticking a gun up your own head, economically,” given the race’s importance to the commonwealth.
The bill received concurrence by a 64-19 vote in the House.
Thoroughbred breeding change
The bill also addresses a source of tension for Central Kentucky’s Thoroughbred breeding industry by specifically barring The Jockey Club, currently the breed’s official registrar, from imposing a limit on the number of mares that can be bred to a single stallion in a year.
The Jockey Club attempted to cap stallion books at 140 mares in 2020, but it was dropped after Spendthrift Farm, Ashford Stud and Three Chimneys Farm sued.
According to The Jockey Club, in 2025 there were 42 stallions bred to 150 or more mares; three bred to 250 or more mares. The top breeder was Tiz the Law, with 274 mares covered. Tiz the Law finished second in the 2020 Kentucky Derby and won that year’s Belmont Stakes, which was held nearly three months before the Derby during the COVID pandemic.
