There are three ways to bet the Kentucky Derby, and only one of them depends on which state you live in. You can bet in person at Churchill Downs on Derby Day itself. You can bet in person at an off-track betting (OTB) site, where your state has one. Or you can bet online or by phone through a licensed advance deposit wagering (ADW) platform, if your state allows it and the platform takes customers there.

The first two do not care where you live, because you are standing at a licensed window. The third does, because online wagering is permitted state by state under the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978 and each state's own law. Check what's legal where you live before you try to fund an online account.

At the track or an OTB

A bet made at Churchill Downs on Derby Day, or at a licensed off-track betting parlor elsewhere, goes into the same pari-mutuel pools as every other bet of that type, in person or online. You hand cash to a teller or use a self-service machine, and no residency check is involved beyond whatever the venue itself requires to enter (minimum age to wager is set by the track or the state's racing commission, not by this page). This is the oldest and simplest way in, and it is unaffected by the state-by-state online rules below.

Licensed advance deposit wagering platforms

An ADW platform lets you deposit money and place pari-mutuel bets online or by phone. These are facts published by the operators, regulators and racing press, listed here in alphabetical order. This is not a ranking, and none of it is a recommendation to open an account: whether a platform operates in your state, and what it requires for identity and age verification, is for the platform's own terms and your state's law to answer, and both can change.

ADW platforms taking Kentucky Derby wagers (published facts, Sept.-Oct. 2026)

6 rows
PlatformOwner / noteStatesSource
1/ST BET1/ST Racing, which also owns Santa Anita and Gulfstream Park; absorbed the now-closed DRF BetsNot stated in the sources used for this pagesource
DK HorseDraftKingsIncludes Arizona, California and New York, among others; DraftKings runs a separate product, DK Racing, in other statessource
FanDuel RacingFanDuel (Flutter); the former TVG brandNot stated in the sources used for this pagesource
NYRA BetsNew York Racing AssociationNot stated in the sources used for this pagesource
TwinSpiresChurchill Downs Incorporated, which also owns and runs the Kentucky DerbyNot stated in the sources used for this pagesource
Xpressbet1/ST RacingLicensed by the California Horse Racing Board as of a Sept. 9, 2026 vote; other states not stated heresource

Blank cells mean the sources used to build this table did not state the figure; check the platform's own site for where it currently operates. TwinSpires, being Churchill Downs' own platform, publishes the track's Future Wager and event-day rules directly.

Free to reuse with credit and a link to this page (CC BY 4.0).

Published counts of how many states permit online horse racing wagers do not agree with each other. One industry guide counted 33 states that allow it; another named only six that prohibit it outright. That gap is itself a reason to check directly with a platform and your own state's regulator rather than rely on either count.

Before you fund any account

Confirm the platform is licensed to take wagers in your state; a licensed ADW will not let you deposit or bet from a state it does not serve. Confirm you meet your state's minimum wagering age, which the platform's own sign-up process checks at account opening. Takeout, the track's commission on each bet, is set by the pool and the track, not by which app you use, so the price of the bet itself does not change based on where you place it.

Once an account is open and funded, the next step is building the bet itself.