Short Summary: Arkansas is not particularly liberal when it comes to its gaming laws, but it is more liberal than most other deeply Southern states in that it has two casinos with racing, electronic bingo and table games. There may be more casinos to come depending on how the November 2018 vote goes, but that remains to be seen. Most anti-gambling laws in the state tend to focus on operators rather than players.
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While Arkansas is more conservative than most states when it comes to gambling, they are reasonably liberal by Southern State standards. Far from Alabama, which doesn’t even have a lottery as of the time of this writing, Arkansas has several different gaming options:
Furthermore, it is currently on the ballot for up to four casinos to open in Arkansas in other counties and this will be (or has been, depending on when you are reading) voted upon in November of 2018. Depending on how this vote goes, this page will be updated accordingly.
The commercial casinos in Arkansas are only kind of casinos because they operate strictly Class II Electronic Bingo, which means that the results are selected from a pool of possible results and the machine do not operate on a separate EPROM chip to ensure completely random results. Rather, they are linked together to a central server from which the results are pulled and the display corresponds to those results. Just recently, these locations have been authorized to offer table games.
Pari-Mutuel racing is legal in Arkansas, so, therefore, racetracks with both simulcast and live action wagering are permitted to exist. This has been the case in Arkansas for an innumerable number of years as racing animals is more popular in Southern states than elsewhere, although a wide variety of states have horse racing. The state taxes racetracks at a rate of 1% of all simulcast revenues as well as 7% of all live handle monies. It is at the two racetracks that the electronic bingo is also conducted.
Both raffle and bingo are permitted in the State of Arkansas, Arkansas Arkansas actually taxes the distributors of the cards an Excise Tax of 0.3 cents per Bingo Card. There is no tax whatsoever on Raffles and most charitable raffles conducted within the state, as with other states, are 50/50 raffles. One must be licensed within the state to conduct Bingo or disseminate Bingo materials, but any bona fide non-profit organization can do a raffle anytime it wants to.
Arkansas conducts a state lottery and it is the State Lottery Commission that generally oversees all forms of gambling. This lottery is also linked to the national games such as Mega Millions and PowerBall.
One recent change in Arkansas, back in May 2022, is that online sportsbooks started to go live pursuant to legislation that would allow sportsbooks to operate in the state.
However, Arkansas has fewer sportsbooks than many other states, despite the fact that they are legal, which is mostly owing to a 51% tax on all sportsbook revenues in the state. NWA Online finds that the usual range for a tax on revenues is 5%-15%, so the haircut that online sportsbooks are taking courtesy of the state government of Arkansas is seen as really steep.
For that reason, we would also expect some of the larger operators who are doing so in other states around the country to avoid Arkansas because the tax rate is unreasonable. Also, those other states are, in theory, capable of raising the tax at any time, so if a company such as DraftKings shows that they are willing to accept a 51% trim in a small market, then larger markets, such as Pennsylvania, might decide that they can also get a bigger piece.
Daily Fantasy Sports is also legal in the State of Arkansas, which has been true for a few years now. In fact, sites such as those operate even in states where they are not necessarily regulated as most states don’t really seem to care about them and, it would seem, consider them as not being meaningfully different than traditional fantasy sports.
Arkansas is also home to two racinos as well as one land casino and resort, all three of which you can read about below. However, the state has no apparent interest in allowing for online gambling, despite the fact that they have allowed regulated sports betting websites and a few states permit both.
There have been a few bills that have attempted to authorize online casinos in the State of Arkansas, but most of those do not make it out of committee. In fact, there was another such effort in 2022 that didn’t really go anywhere and have been a few others over the years.
Of course, we could find no instance of a player being prosecuted merely for playing casino games online, and even if there was, the penalty of a $50-$100 fine is fairly negligible. We also don’t know how the state would find out about it anyway. The only gambling arrests of any kind to take place in the State of Arkansas that we could find all had to do with illegal gambling operators in physical locations and no players were even arrested or fined in those cases.
It’s our opinion that you don’t have to worry about any action being taken against you if you would prefer to play casino games, so we have listed a few of our topic picks for online casinos offering their services in Arkansas above!
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Arkansas is one of just a few US states where gambling authorities enforce the state’s strict anti-gaming laws. The most recent case I can find that’s worth point outcomes from 2010 – after an operation performed in concert with the FBI, Arkansas State Troopers found a large group of citizens guilty of “operating an illegal gambling business.” This charge is a class C Felony with a maximum charge of five years’ imprisonment and fines as high as $25,000.
Planning to gamble over the Internet while living in Arkansas? Be careful – while there is no specific prohibition against online betting, the state code’s prohibition against any form of betting not explicitly made legal could put you in dutch with authorities.
It bears repeating that these are not actually, “Casinos,” in the proper sense as they offer only Class II machines. These locations would also offer live and simulcast racing.
Depending on how the (as of the time of this writing) vote goes in November 2018, we will update this page if the four casinos that have been mentioned in the vote open.
This establishment contains live and simulcast racing and is located in Hot Springs, Arkansas. It features several reel machines, and just recently, was authorized to have table games.
These games include Roulette.
This establishment is located in West Memphis, Arkansas. They offer over 2,000 “Gaming machines,” as well as live blackjack and three-card poker as well as a few other electronic table games. They continue to offer over 400 live greyhound races every year as well as horse and greyhound simulcast betting options. This is also the only casino in Arkansas to offer live poker as of the time of this writing.
Saracen Casino Resort is the first casino to open in the State of Arkansas, which it did in 2020 (they didn’t pick the best year, did they?) and is located at 1 Saracen Resort Drive.
This casino opened in sections as development on the property was completed, with the first section mainly consisting of a store and a mini casino floor with only 300, or so, machines.
The second section of the casino is actually a totally separate building across the street and would rival some Las Vegas casinos in size.
According to their website, the property is home to more than 1,800 slot machines, 40 Table Games and also has a dedicated poker room, which is the first of its kind in the State of Arkansas. Table Games include Baccarat, Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, Three-Card Poker, Louisiana Stud (this is almost like Ultimate Texas Hold ‘Em, except with three community cards) and Jackpot Hold ‘Em (even moire similar to Ultimate Texas Hold ‘Em).
Of course, we would recommend calling the casino in advance, if you are a Table Games enthusiast, to get the normal times of operation if you are looking for a specific game. Most casinos, especially regional casinos, usually only run games such as Blackjack during the entire time that the Table Games section is open.
The Poker Room, at least as of the time of this writing, seems to only deal Texas Hold ‘Em.
As of right now, the property is more casino than it is resort as the anticipated hotel has barely broken ground, so it might be a couple of years before that is up and running. If you’re planning to go out of your way to visit the property, you will want to know that you’ll have to plan to stay elsewhere for the time being.
Fortunately, four of the property’s anticipated eateries are now open, and they include the Red Oak Steakhouse (Sine Dining, Thursday-Sunday evenings), the Legends Sports Bar (open daily from 11:00a.m. until almost midnight), Quapaw Kitchens Buffet (Thursday-Sunday evening) and a 24/7 place for quick bites called Saracen Express.
With that, this new casino seems like a great place to spend a weekend if you happen to live in the area or are visiting, but dining options are quite limited in the early part of the week. We would think the players most likely to be attracted to this property are Poker and Table Games enthusiasts, which can sometimes be hard to find in that part of the country, especially if you live East of Arkansas.
The other counties in Arkansas are getting a little bit jealous due to the fact that these two counties not only have electronic bingo, but NOW also have electronic table games and live dealer table games. They are hoping for the voters to come through for them in November 2018 so that four of them can open some casinos of their own.
It’s not well-ed today, but The Natural State was once home to the notorious types of mobsters and other organized crime figures that we associate with cities like Las Vegas today. How’d it get that way?
Hot Springs was probably the first gambling Mecca in America, experiencing a huge rush of gaming tourism beginning immediately after the Civil War. Financial troubles during Reconstruction pushed local authorities to allow gaming, as did a good deal of corruption on the part of elected officials. Al Capone even had a small role to play in the gaming scene in Arkansas in the 1920s.
You might think that Arkansas was pro-gambling at that time, but you’d be wrong. The state had laws against all forms of betting in its law books even then – but we know for a fact that no arrests related to gaming were made in Hot Springs until the year 1967. Unregulated gaming took place there for some fifty years until Governor Winthrop Rockefeller sent in squads of state troopers to shut down all casino operations and burn all the gaming machines, tables, and other props.
Enforcement has been fairly strict in the state since 1967 – except for Oaklawn Park and Southland Park. In part due to decades-old bribery arrangements, and in part because they made the bulk of their money on race betting and not casino gambling, these sites are simply exempt from state law, apparently by fiat. What started with the addition of a few Instant Racing games in 2003 is expanding, little by little, to the point where some are predicting that the state could allow table gaming within the next five years or so.
The Arkansas State Lottery is another lottery that participates in some of the multi-state jackpot games, such as Powerball and Mega Millions. The lottery tends to be somewhat popular in this state because, as we have mentioned, there are not a whole lot of other options when it comes to state licensed and regulated forms of gambling.
Naturally, the lottery returns are terrible. Fortunately, the 2020 Arkansas Annual Lottery Report, which is available here.
Separates Instant Ticket Sales and prizes from Drawing games, which the Annual Report refers to as, “Online Games,” though that doesn’t mean conducted via Internet. With that, let’s go ahead and get our overall sales, prizes and returns to player for the two general types of games for 2020:
| Game Type | Sales | Prizes | Return Percentage |
| Instant | 452,281,204 | 325,816,713 | 72.04% |
| Drawing | 79,161,657 | 43,791,459 | 55.32% |
| Total | 531,442,861 | 369,608,172 | 69.55% |
As we can see, the returns to player from this lottery are still terrible (lotteries always are), but are at least better than the average state lottery slightly. The overall return percentage is bolstered significantly by the fact that nearly 85% of all ticket sales are Instant Tickets.
$161,834,689 was lost to the Arkansas State Lottery during FY2020, so based on a population of 3,030,522, we come up with losses per resident of about $53.40. That’s not a staggeringly high number compared to some other states.
Compared to FY19, Instant Tickets, Cash 3, Cash 4 and Fast Play gained popularity while every other type of game lost popularity. There’s going to be some natural variance when it comes to other games because people tend to play games like Powerball and Mega Millions when the jackpots are at absurdly high levels, but it takes people playing for those jackpots to get there in the first place.
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Arkansas is finally coming around when it comes to live casino options as it finally offers table games. Let’s hope that these locations can eventually get some video poker devices, too.
Arkansas remains one of the more liberal Southern states (which isn’t saying much) when it comes to gambling as it technically has two casinos, lottery and is pretty reasonable when it comes to charitable gambling. Social gambling is basically legal, such as home games, considering the biggest penalty for unlawful gambling as a player is a fine between $50-$100.
Further, while the law has been upheld and operators of unlawful forms of gambling have been charged, we can find no instance of anything along these lines ever happening to a player. The fines would be pretty weak even if they did, but also nobody in Arkansas law enforcement would have any reason to know what you are doing in your own home.
For those reasons, we conclude that you should feel perfectly safe gambling online in Arkansas, provided that you are just a player and not an operator.
