New Hampshire Betting

Online sports betting is legal in New Hampshire, and the state does not simply license it — it runs it. The sports betting chapter the legislature added to the Revised Statutes Annotated in 2019 put the New Hampshire Lottery Commission in the position of the book itself, with private companies acting as its contracted agents rather than as independent licensees. That single design choice explains almost everything unusual about betting in the state, including the fact that the statutory minimum age is 18 rather than 21.

New Hampshire Online Sportsbooks

The authorising language is short and direct:

"The commission is authorized to operate a sports book for the purposes of accepting and paying sports wagers by authorized bettors within the state in conformance with the requirements of this chapter." — RSA 287-I:2

Because the Commission is the operator, there is no open application window. The chapter's agent provision requires the Commission to "conduct sports books for sports wagering through agents selected through a competitive bid process and approved by the governor and executive council", with the winning bid judged on the percentage of revenue returned to the state alongside financial stability, integrity and problem-gambling commitments. Net proceeds, after costs, prizes and payments for problem gambling services, go to the state education trust fund.

New Hampshire Sports Betting Sites

The chapter sets a hard ceiling on how crowded the mobile market can get:

"The commission and its agents are authorized to operate a sports books that offer tier I, tier II, and tier III sports wagers through a mobile sports wagering platform by mobile devices or over the Internet. No more than 5 mobile sports wagering agents shall be in operation at any given time." — RSA 287-I:7

The ceiling is five; the practice is one. The Lottery's own sports betting section presents a single mobile application and tells players to "Download the DraftKings Sportsbook App or visit any New Hampshire Sportsbook location or Sports 603 retailer." That is also the answer to the obvious verification question. In most states you check an operator against a regulator's published licensee list; in New Hampshire the Lottery is the licensing authority and the counterparty at once, so the Lottery's sports betting pages are the list. An application that does not appear there is not an agent of the Commission, and a wager placed with it is not a wager placed under the chapter.

Retail betting exists alongside the app but is deliberately small. The chapter allows no more than ten retail sports book locations at any one time, and each host town or city must first approve them at an annual town meeting or municipal election; the Commission keeps the list of municipalities that have voted yes.

The Minimum Age Is 18

New Hampshire is one of a small group of states that set the sports betting age below 21, and it does so in the definitions themselves:

"'Authorized sports bettor' means an individual 18 years of age or older who is physically present in the state of New Hampshire when placing a sports wager with the commission or an authorized agent of the commission and is not a prohibited sports bettor." — RSA 287-I:1, II

The same definitions list anyone under 18 as a prohibited sports bettor, and the mobile wagering section requires age verification "to block access to and prevent sports wagers by persons under the age of 18 years". Presence matters as much as age: wagers must be initiated and received inside the state's geographic borders, and the Commission and its agents may not accept a wager from someone physically outside New Hampshire at the time it is placed.

Several categories of event are closed regardless of age. Wagering is barred on any high school event anywhere, on collegiate events taking place in New Hampshire, and on collegiate events in which a team from a New Hampshire college takes part — with a narrow carve-out that lets tournament-wide markets stand where the outcome depends on all games in the tournament.

Horse Racing in New Hampshire

Online horse-race betting is separately and genuinely regulated here, which is not true of every state on this site. Advance deposit wagering sits in the horse and dog racing chapter, and it was rewritten with effect from 1 July 2025:

"Advance deposit wagering is authorized for pari-mutuel betting on horse racing under this chapter if conducted in compliance with this section and the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978… It is unlawful for any person or entity to accept an advance deposit wager from a New Hampshire resident unless the person or entity is a licensed advance deposit wagering provider in the state of New Hampshire." — RSA 284:22-c, I and II

A provider must file evidence of financial responsibility, get a plan of operation approved, verify that account holders are natural persons at least 18 years of age, and pay the Commission 1.25 per cent of every wager taken from a New Hampshire resident. The transitional allowance that let pre-existing racebooks keep serving residents while they worked through licensing expired on 1 January 2026, so the licensed-provider test is now the whole test.

Prediction Markets

Event-contract platforms are recorded on this page as a grey market, and the reason is structural rather than rhetorical. New Hampshire law creates exactly two routes to a lawful online wager: a sports book operated by the Lottery Commission or its contracted agent, and an advance deposit wagering provider licensed under the racing chapter. A federally designated exchange holds neither, so it is not operating inside the state's gambling framework. Nothing quoted here says the state has blessed those platforms, and nothing quoted here says it has acted against them.

New Hampshire Sports Betting Laws

Oversight is handled by a division of sports wagering inside the Commission, which must approve each agent's security and internal control report, computer system security report, house rules, accounting controls and responsible gaming plan before any wager is taken, and again every year after. Wager types and event categories need prior approval, and the Commission may only approve categories where the outcome can be verified and generated by a reliable, independent process. The Commission also adopts rules on the operation, conduct, location and oversight of sports books, and may enact emergency rules that take effect on approval.

Responsible Gambling

The mobile wagering section obliges the Commission, directly or through its agent, to provide daily, weekly and monthly wager limits "consistent with the best practices in addressing problem gambling" and a voluntary self-exclusion programme for set periods. Problem gambling services are paid for out of sports wagering proceeds before anything reaches the education trust fund. The New Hampshire Council on Problem Gambling publishes a helpline on (603) 724-1605.