Delaware Casinos

No Indian Gaming in Delaware

Delaware has no Indian casinos and three racinos (racetracks with casinos).

Delaware Minimum Gambling Age

Minimum gambling ages are 21 years old for casinos, 21 for poker, 18 for bingo, 21 for sports betting, 18 for horse racing, 18 for the lottery.

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Delaware Racinos

Delaware Park Racetrack & Slots
777 Delaware Park Blvd.
Wilmington, DE 19804
800-41-SLOTS
2,540 slots, blackjack, craps, roulette, poker, horse racing

Dover Downs
1131 North DuPont Highway
Dover, DE 19901
800-711-5882
302-674-4600
2,600 slots, 400 video poker, blackjack, roulette, horse racing

Harrington Raceway & Casino
15 West Rider Rd.
Harrington, DE 19952
(888) 887-5687
1,800 slots, 51 table games, harness racing

News Headlines Continued

Delaware Casinos Earn Higher Than Expected Revenue (March 17, 2011)
Delaware's casinos are bringing in higher revenues than originally expected. Gaming makes up the state's fourth largest source of money. Competition from out of state casinos may be intense, however it is not having much impact by report.
Delaware Park, Harrington Raceway, and Dover Downs paid the state in February $165.5 million. The money came from revenues earned on table games, slots, and betting on pro football games.
Forecasters estimated around $20 million less than what was earned in 2010. This is due to the competition from Philadelphia. However, so far the amount has been much higher than expected. If the trend continues, Delaware could earn $254 million for the year.
Delaware is the only state that allows sports betting legally east of the Rockies. Also by offering table games and slots, casino visitors have more gaming options to stay closer to home than to visit neighboring states.
 

Dover Downs Hotel & Casino Largest Ever in Delaware (February 23, 2011)
PRESS RELEASE

The Crown Royal Poker Room at Dover Downs Hotel & Casino produced Delaware's largest Bad Beat Jackpot to date on a Texas Hold 'Em table Sunday night. The jackpot netted a total of $118,833, and was divided incrementally among nine lucky poker players.

The winner of the largest Delaware Bad Beat payout is Magnolia, Del., resident Nicholas McCulley, who took home $59,416 cash for Aces Full of Jacks, which was topped by a hand of Four-of-a-Kind Jacks.

"We are pleased and proud to have paid out the largest Delaware bad beat jackpot to date," said Steve Keener, assistant vice president of Casino Operations. "Our poker room is always fun and loaded with great table action, and jackpots like this ramp up the excitement in the room."

The unconventional, top-prize payout to the player of the second-highest, "losing" hand is what the Bad Beat Jackpot is all about. It is a consolation prize for being beaten when holding an otherwise great, high hand.

In this case, the $118,333 jackpot was paid out at 50 percent to Mr. McCulley for the second highest hand, 25 percent to the top-ranked hand ($29,708), and the remaining 25 percent divided and paid equally to the seven remaining players at $4,244 each.

Unique to Dover Downs Hotel & Casino is the very high reset amount on the Bad Beat Jackpot, which is at an astounding $108,000, nearly tenfold higher than other area casinos.
 

US Supreme Court rejects Delaware appeal on sports betting (May 03, 2010)

Governor Jack Markell, was planning on using the money generated from sports gambling to help close the state of Delaware's budget gap but the U.S. Supreme Court rejected their appeal on May 3.

The Delaware broader authority won a ruling in a lower court that allowed the state to offer single game betting on NFL games and betting on other sports. Delaware is one of only four states that may legally offer sports betting.

Based on the 1992 Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act barred expansion of U.S. sports gambling, making an exception for the four states -- Nevada, Oregon, Montana and Delaware -- that allowed sports betting at some point from 1976 to 1990. The law authorizes gambling in those states "to the extent that the scheme was conducted" during that period.

In 1976 the state of Delaware offered a multi-game football lottery for four months. Gov Markwell argued the state could offer other forms of sports betting. The proposal would allow betting on single games.

NFL, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Collegiate Athletic Association sued the state in hope it would prevent the governor's appeal.

The Supreme Court denied the ruling of the lower court saying Delaware is limited to the type of betting it offered in 1976. The decision was considered a victory for the NFL and other professional sports leagues.
 

Delaware legalizes table games at its casinos (February 09, 2010)

Delaware Gov. Jack Markell signed a recently passed bill from the legislature to legalize table games in the state. This includes games like blackjack, poker, craps and roulette.

The new law poses an economic threat to Atlantic City's $3.9 billion casino market.

Delaware's table games should begin this summer after casinos hire and train their personnel.

Pennsylvania recently enacted similar legislation. Together the two states could take 15% of the Atlantic City market according to some gaming analysts. Cory H. Morowitz, chairman of Morowitz Gaming Advisors LLC, said "Atlantic City gets hit both by Pennsylvania and Delaware because they sit within the heart of our feeder markets. When Delaware gets table games, they will draw a lot from the D.C.-Baltimore area."

Delaware's casinos will keep 66 percent of the revenue generated by their table games. The state will receive 29 percent and the remaining 5 percent will subsidize horse-racing.
 

Appeals court rules against Delaware sports betting (August 26, 2009)

DELAWARE - A federal appeals court ruled Monday to block single-game sports betting at three racetracks in Delaware. The court agreed with arguments presented by four major professional sports leagues that single-game betting violated federal law.

Delaware's three casinos said afterwards they will offer some type of sports betting but acknowledged the ruling will have a negative impact of revenues.

Gov. Jack Markell expressed his disappointment with the decision, but said, "The state still has the legal authority to offer a sports lottery of parlays involving professional football games, which is a competitive advantage for our three racinos."
 

Delaware legislature passes sports betting bill (May 14, 2009)

The state senate passed a bill Tuesday to legalize a sports betting lottery. This will make Delaware the only state east of the Mississippi to offer sports betting and the third state, after Nevada and Montana, to allow a form of sports betting.

Sports betting is granted by exceptions in the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) to these three states plus Oregon, which ended its sports lottery in 2006.

Gov. Markell hopes the state Supreme Court will rule on the bills legality in time for it to take effect by the start of the NFL season in the fall.
The bill allows single-game betting.

If sports betting is successful in Delaware, it could spread quickly to other states.

"A state will usually start out with very strict regulations," said professor Mark W. Nichols of University of Nevada-Reno. "Then a nearby state sees its residents traveling to that neighboring state to gamble and that serves as a justification to legalize gambling in that other state."
 

Gov. Markell wants to legalize sports betting  (March 12, 2009)

DOVER - As reported by ESPN the Magazine: "During his campaign for Delaware Governor last fall Jack Markell often hinted that, if elected, he'd support sports betting in his state. Now that he's got the job, Markell is done hinting.

"ESPN The Magazine has learned that sometime next week, according to a statehouse source, Markell will introduce a proposal which, for the first time in more than 30 years, makes gambling on sports legal east of the Mississippi River. The plan, which could be approved by the state legislature as early as April, would likely be operational come fall, just in time for the NFL season.

"Markell's proposal calls for a statewide sports lottery that only allows parlay bets. In a parlay, gamblers have to get two bets right in order to win. It's an idea that has been brewing in Delaware for a while, long before the economy imploded and the state found itself with a budget shortfall of $700M. In fact, a proposal to allow gambling on sports died in the state legislature last year, when then governor Ruth Ann Minner made it clear she'd veto a resulting bill.

"The newly elected Markell, who has spent the past several weeks listening to proponents of gambling as well its opponents, is much more of a pragmatist than a betting revolutionary. He hasn't been to Vegas in nearly 15 years and almost never hits the race track/casinos (called racinos) in his home state. But the way he sees it is this: Delaware already allows horse racing and slots. And with the state currently $700M in the hole, offering the Pats minus-six over the Jets when bettors come by to drop a nickel in the slots isn't amoral. As he told me a couple months ago, 'you can't really be half-pregnant.' "
 

Dover Downs Hotel & Casino wins Best of the East Award (December 12, 2008 )

DOVER - Dover Downs Hotel & Casino has been awarded the 2008 Best of the East Award by the readers of Meetings East magazine. More than 22,000 qualified planning professionals voted in the award process.

"We are thrilled to have again been selected by professional meeting planners as the premier meeting destination in Delaware's capital city," said George Fiorile, VP and GM. "In September 2007, we opened 268 new hotel rooms and suites to reach a total of 500 rooms, making us the largest hotel in the state of Delaware. Our meeting and convention space increased by 10,000 square feet, and we opened a beautiful, full-service day spa, Toppers Spa/Salon at Dover Downs Hotel & Casino. These improvements - along with the completion of The Colonnade casino expansion this year with three more restaurants, a casino lounge and shops - have solidified Dover Downs Hotel & Casino as the region's top convention and entertainment destination."

Meetings East awards recognize the best hotels, conference centers, spas, retreats, and resorts throughout the eastern region of North America. It includes Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, D.C., and Eastern Canada.
 

Will Sports Betting Come to Delaware? (October 15, 2007)

The VLAC will submit a report November 5th recommending the legalization of a sports lottery. A bill authorizing a sports lottery was approved by a State House committee last June, but a vote by the House has been delayed pending a study by the budget finance director and controller general due December 21st. Although Governor Minner is opposed to it, the House Majority Leader believes there is enough support to bring it to a vote in the next few months.