Politics
Sports Betting Giants Push to Open Rhode Island Market, Citing $50M in Lost Revenue
A coalition of major online sportsbooks says Rhode Islanders placed over 4 million bets in neighboring states last year, and it's urging lawmakers to expand the state's single-operator market despite lottery regulators' warnings.
PROVIDENCE â A coalition of major online sports betting companies is renewing its push to open Rhode Island's tightly controlled gambling market, releasing new data it says shows the state is bleeding revenue to its neighbors.
The Sports Betting Alliance, whose members include DraftKings, FanDuel, Fanatics Sportsbook and BetMGM, said Thursday that Rhode Island accounts placed more than 4 million bets across state lines in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York between July 2025 and July 2026. Those wagers came from nearly 103,000 Rhode Island accounts, according to the group.
Online bettors must be physically located in a state to place a wager there, meaning the activity represents money that left Rhode Island's regulated market.
"Every one of the 4.23 million bets Rhode Islanders placed in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York is revenue that could have stayed in Rhode Island," Joe Maloney, the alliance's president and CEO, said in a statement. "Expanding the state's regulated market would keep those bettors, and the revenue and protections that come with them, here at home."
The alliance claims Rhode Island could collect an additional $50 million over the next decade under an expansion proposal that lawmakers considered earlier this year.
Rhode Island currently allows only one licensed online sportsbook, SportsBook Rhode Island, operated by IGT. The state authorized IGT as the sole provider when online sports gambling was legalized in 2019. Earlier this year, the Rhode Island Lottery Commission selected Bally's, the state's sole casino operator, to launch a second app when IGT's exclusive contract expires later this month.
But lottery regulators have opposed going further. During the 2026 legislative session, representatives of FanDuel and DraftKings testified in favor of a proposal to allow four to six sports betting platforms in the state. The measure passed the Senate but died in the House.
A central sticking point is how much of the proceeds the operators keep. Rhode Island currently takes 51% of sports betting revenue. The expansion proposal would have reduced the state's share, a change lottery regulators called "financially detrimental" and said would "significantly reduce" revenue. The Lottery also argued that the state and its betting market cannot support more than the two platforms it has approved.
A FanDuel representative said the company did not bid on the state's second online betting contract because the state's cut was too high. Only one other company bid on the deal Bally's won.
The revenue gap with neighboring states is stark. Rhode Island collected nearly $18 million in online sports betting revenue over a one-year period, while Massachusetts, which taxes online sports betting at 20%, took in $170 million over the same period â nearly ten times as much in a state with roughly seven times Rhode Island's population.
The renewed lobbying effort sets up another legislative fight over how much competition Rhode Island should allow in its gambling market, and how the state balances new revenue against the terms lottery regulators say are needed to protect the public and the state's bottom line.