BetOnline.ag Vermont: Legal Market, Just Three Books

Three. That's the entire list of sportsbook apps Vermont considers legal — DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics — out of a law that allowed for up to six. BetOnline.ag was never on that list and never applied to be, because it doesn't hold a Vermont license at all. Understanding what that actually means for a Vermont bettor takes separating three things most guides blur together: the sportsbook licensing story, the flat ban on online casino play, and a legislature that has already tried once to undo the whole market.

Vermont Ran a Closed Casting Call, Not an Open Market

Governor Phil Scott signed H.127 on June 14, 2023, making Vermont the 29th state to legalize mobile sports betting — and the last state in New England to do it. The market went live January 11, 2024, under the Vermont Department of Liquor and Lottery, taxed at 20% of operator revenue. The law didn't open the door to anyone who wanted in: it capped licenses at two to six and put the department in charge of picking who qualified.

Five companies applied. Three made it through. DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics Betting and Gaming got licensed and launched on day one. BetMGM was turned away for pitching a variable revenue-share structure the department had already ruled out during the RFP process. Penn Interactive's application for ESPN Bet was rejected as materially non-compliant over missing required paperwork — not a policy objection, a filing one. (ESPN Bet has since shut down entirely after Penn and ESPN ended their partnership, so that door closed twice over.)

Is BetOnline Legal in Vermont?

No — not in the specific, narrow sense Vermont's law actually uses. This isn't a state where "legal" is a fuzzy judgment call; it's a list, and BetOnline isn't on it. The Department of Liquor and Lottery evaluated every company that wanted a Vermont sportsbook license and approved three. BetOnline runs its sportsbook and casino from a license outside the U.S. entirely, which puts it in the same unlicensed category here that it occupies in states with no regulated market at all — except Vermont actually has one, and BetOnline simply isn't part of it.

Online Casino Is a Separate, Flat Ban

Here's the part a lot of Vermont guides skip because they only cover sports betting. Vermont has no legal casino of any kind — commercial or tribal, online or in person. 13 V.S.A. § 2133 makes playing a game of chance for money in a "common gaming or gambling house" punishable by a fine of up to $200, up to 60 days in jail, or both, and that language has been read to reach online casino platforms the same way it reaches a physical card room. H.127 carved out an exception for sports betting specifically. It never touched casino games.

That matters for BetOnline more than it does for a sportsbook-only app, because BetOnline is a sportsbook and a casino under one account. The sportsbook side has a licensing conversation to have, even if BetOnline lost it. The casino side doesn't get one — Vermont law doesn't distinguish between an offshore casino site and an unlicensed card game in someone's garage.

The Bill That Tried to Undo the Whole Market

In February 2025 — just over a year after Vermont's sportsbook market launched — Representative Thomas Stevens introduced H.133, a bill that would have repealed the sports betting law and the lottery provisions alongside it, making offering either one a criminal act again. It picked up two co-sponsors and never got a committee hearing. No U.S. state has repealed a sports betting legalization since the Supreme Court struck down PASPA in 2018, and Vermont didn't become the first. But the fact that a sitting lawmaker filed it at all, followed in 2026 by a narrower proposal to tax individual bets hard enough to squeeze the market, says this legislature hasn't settled into treating legal betting as permanent and uncontroversial the way some states have.

Is BetOnline Legit and Safe for Vermont Players?

Legit and safe split apart here the way they do in most states on this site. On the legit side, BetOnline has an actual case: it's operated continuously since the early 2000s, and its crypto payouts run up to $500,000 on major coins, typically clearing inside 24-48 hours — none of that depends on which three companies Vermont happened to license. On the safe side, Vermont doesn't carry West Virginia's track record of naming and cutting off a specific offshore brand, but it is a state where lawmakers have already tried once to unwind the entire legal market and followed up with a bill aimed at making legal betting more expensive. That's a legislature worth watching, not one to assume will leave the current arrangement untouched.

The Honest Verdict for Vermont Bettors

Vermont isn't a state with a gap BetOnline is quietly filling — it's a state that built a licensing process, ran it, and produced a three-name list that doesn't include BetOnline. Anyone who wants a regulated sportsbook here already has three real choices. Anyone who wants online casino games has none, licensed or not, because Vermont hasn't legalized that product for anybody. BetOnline's payout history is real, but it doesn't change what the Department of Liquor and Lottery's license list says, and it doesn't touch the flat statutory ban on online casino play.

Whatever a Vermont reader decides, the same floor applies everywhere on this site: gambling carries a built-in house edge and is never a way to make money. 21+, and only with money you can fully afford to lose.