Alabama Sports Betting Debate Returns As Lawmakers Seek Voter Support For Gambling
Alabama’s decades-long flirtation with legalized gambling and sports betting is back on the table again this year in Montgomery.
State Sen. Merika Coleman introduced legislation that would let Alabama voters decide whether the state should authorize a lottery, casino gaming, and both retail and online sports betting. If it sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
For more than 25 years, Alabama lawmakers have repeatedly tried — and failed — to legalize some form of gambling. Proposals routinely collapse under the weight of political infighting, moral opposition, or disagreements over the fine print.
Coleman’s bill, SB257, attempts to sidestep those pitfalls by stripping the question down to its bare essentials: Do Alabamians want lawmakers to come back and figure it out?
“This is about revenue,” Coleman said via AL.com, bluntly, framing the issue the same way many gambling advocates have for years. Alabama faces looming budget shortfalls for Medicaid, child welfare services, and other safety-net programs — pressures that have only intensified as federal funding has tightened.
Rather than raising taxes, Coleman is betting that voters are ready to reconsider an idea that has repeatedly stalled in Montgomery.
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A Familiar Story Of Near-Misses For Gambling In Alabama
Alabama voters last weighed in directly on a lottery in 1999, when they rejected then-Gov. Don Siegelman’s proposal by an 54–46 margin. Since then, gambling legislation has surfaced almost every legislative session, often gaining momentum — and then imploding.
Most recently, a sweeping gambling and sports betting proposal in 2024 fell just one vote short of clearing the Legislature. Other efforts have died quietly in committee or fractured over disputes involving casino locations, regulatory authority, or how to handle the Poarch Band of Creek Indians’ gaming interests.
“The problem we’ve always had is the details,” Coleman acknowledged. “That’s where we get bogged down.”
SB257 is designed to avoid that trap.
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A ‘Clean’ Vote Before The Details
Instead of laying out a full regulatory framework — something that has doomed prior efforts — SB257 would amend the state constitution to ask voters whether they want a lottery, casinos, sports betting, a tribal compact and a gaming commission in principle.
If approved by three-fifths of the Legislature and then by voters, lawmakers would return later to hammer out the specifics.
That includes:
- Regulation of in-person and online sports betting
- Casino gaming rules
- A potential compact with the Poarch Creek Indians
- Creation of a state gambling commission
Coleman says polling suggests more than 70% of Alabamians want at least the opportunity to vote on a lottery — a sentiment that has persisted even as gambling bills repeatedly stall at the State House.
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Alabama One Of 5 States Without A Lottery
Alabama remains one of just five states without a lottery, despite being surrounded by lottery states. The result, Coleman argues, is predictable: residents cross state lines, buy tickets elsewhere, and dollars flow to Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee. Two of those states (Tennessee and Florida) have online sports betting.
Meanwhile, prediction markets have flooded into the state. Kalshi, DraftKings Predictions, Fanatics Market, Robinhood, Polymarket, and FanDuel Predicts offer sports-event contracts for Alabama residents 18 and over. Those trading sites are governed by the Commodities Futures Trading Corporation. For now they remain free to offer such markets on sports nationwide. Multiple cases are pending in state and federal courts. Polymarket recently exited Nevada.
DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics do not offer sports event contracts where they are licensed to offer sports betting. Their foray into prediction markets has been seen as a leverage point. One to push jurisdictions like Alabama to legalize sports betting.
Not This Year — But Not Going Away
Legislative leaders have already signaled that 2026 is unlikely to be the year Alabama finally legalizes gambling or sports betting. Coleman doesn’t dispute that.
That patience reflects the reality of Alabama’s gambling debate: progress is slow, incremental, and often measured in inches, not yards.
If history is any guide, Alabama’s gambling question isn’t going away — it’s just circling back for another round.
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