HOUSTON – Two of the last four World Series champions play in Texas, and this summer they are chasing October together. The Houston Astros and Texas Rangers are running side by side in the American League West, one of the tightest division races in baseball. The one thing neither team’s fans can do is legally … Read more
AUSTIN – The most important number of the 2026 NFL season may not be a point spread. It is $36.8 billion, the amount a new industry analysis projects will change hands on prediction markets tied to pro football this year, a figure that would, for the first time, top what every legal sportsbook in America … Read more
HOUSTON – The nurse who takes your blood pressure and the doctor who reads your chart may have helped pay for their training the same way a bettor plays an NFL Sunday. A new survey says a growing share of the country’s future healthcare workers are betting to pay for school, and Texas, with the … Read more
AUSTIN – Almost every conversation about gambling in Texas circles back to the Legislature and the next opening for lawmakers to approve casinos or sports betting when the session resumes in 2027. Yet the official with the most day-to-day sway over gambling before then will be chosen this fall, and the Texas attorney general race … Read more
AUSTIN – Texas has never legalized sports betting. The Legislature has voted it down, the lieutenant governor has buried it, and no referendum has ever reached the state’s voters. And yet DraftKings and FanDuel, the two companies that define American sports betting, are live in Texas right now, taking Texans’ money on the Cowboys, the … Read more
AUSTIN – Cowboys bets are banned in Texas; wagering on a game can technically land you in some hot water. Wagering on who will win the state’s blockbuster U.S. Senate race is legal, federally regulated, and open to anyone 18 and older with a smartphone. That is the strange split screen of 2026. While sports … Read more
AUSTIN – The loudest new voice in the fight over gambling in Texas does not belong to a casino magnate or a crusading politician. It belongs to the state’s doctors, and they are worried about teenagers. The Texas Medical Association, the state’s largest physician group, is pressing lawmakers to impose an age restriction on prediction … 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
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
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.