Texas Forever!
Few places in the country have residents who rep their state more than Texas. It has a lot to offer from beautiful cities, great food, historical sites and the ocean. One of the few things Texas doesn’t have is legalized gambling.
The biggest city in Texas is Houston with roughly 2.3 million people. There are three cities with over 1 million people and two more with around 950,000. Due to this, Texas has multiple major professional sports teams. The NFL teams are the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans. The Dallas Mavericks, Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs are the NBA teams. The MLB teams are the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros. The one NHL team is the Dallas Stars. There are also 25 Division 1 schools in Texas. The national brands are Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, TCU, Baylor, SMU and Houston.
The Lone Star State is a hotbed of sports, both professionally and collegiately. This is one of the major targets of sportsbooks and pro-legalization efforts. Getting Texas to legalize would be a huge domino. However, right now it seems to be an uphill battle.
Texas is one of the strictest states about gambling. The only casinos in operation are three tribal casinos. Other forms of legal gambling include horse and dog race betting. Everything else is prohibited at the moment.
There has been a little movement towards getting sports gambling legalized. The first bill was introduced in 2019 but there was very little support. There are major political and social hurdles to overcome in Texas to make this happen. It’s a state that is reluctant to loosen its gambling restrictions. Multiple bills were reintroduced in 2021 with no luck. There have been some legislators saying they will try again in 2023. Texans wanting to legally bet on sports can visit neighboring Louisiana and Arkansas.