Lorcan Palaca 
HOUSTON – Tilman Fertitta is on the verge of becoming one of the biggest casino operators in America. He just cannot be one in Texas. In May, Fertitta’s company reached a definitive agreement to acquire Caesars Entertainment in an all-cash deal valued at about $17.6 billion, including roughly $11.9 billion in assumed debt. If it … Read more
AUSTIN – A growing body of research suggests that when a state legalizes sports betting, some of the money wagered comes straight out of the grocery budget. A new study puts a number on it, and the finding lands in the middle of Texas’s long-running fight over whether to legalize the practice at all. The … Read more
Texas lottery education funding is a small slice of the school budget, not the windfall the myth promises. See where the money goes and who really pays.
AUSTIN – For a growing number of college athletes, a missed free throw or a quiet scoring night now carries a price that has nothing to do with the standings: a phone full of threats from strangers who lost money betting on them. The uneasy collision of sports betting and college athletes has become one … Read more
THACKERVILLE, Okla. – This town of a few hundred people exists because of the casino at its edge, and that casino exists because of Texas. At the first highway exit north of the Red River sits WinStar World Casino, and most of the people walking its mile-long floor drove up from Texas to get there. … Read more
Argentina and Messi Come to AT&T Stadium. Texas Still Has No Legal Sportsbook. ARLINGTON – The defending World Cup champions arrive in North Texas on Monday, with Lionel Messi chasing history and a noon kickoff against Austria that could decide who wins the group. It is the kind of event that fills sportsbooks everywhere. In … Read more
A March 17, 2026 Texas Fourteenth Court of Appeals ruling has triggered a statewide crackdown on eight-liner game rooms, including police raids in Galveston and Bexar counties and the arrest of a sitting Hitchcock mayor. Small Texas cities are scrambling to ban the machines outright before losing the permit-fee revenue some have come to depend on.
Gary Grief was indicted again on May 13, 2026 over the 2023 Lotto Texas drawing an offshore syndicate gamed for $95 million. The former Texas Lottery Commission chief is due in the 167th District Court the morning of June 26. The reindictment came two weeks after the first one was dismissed within a day.
Kalshi has continued to take sports wagers from Texas residents despite a cease-and-desist letter from the state attorney general, in a federal-state preemption fight that has effectively legalized online sports betting in a state whose Legislature has rejected every attempt to authorize it. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wants to close the loophole. He cannot.
A Lubbock judge is set to decide within days whether Brendan Sorsby suits up for Texas Tech this season, after the quarterback admitted to a four-year, $90,000 betting habit that touched his own former team.