Fifty cents does not sound like much until the bet is two dollars. On July 1, 2025, Illinois began taxing online sportsbooks on the number of bets they take, on top of what they earn: 25 cents a wager for the first 20 million each year, 50 cents after that. Some sportsbooks responded by charging bettors a fee on every ticket. For anyone who likes small in-play wagers, that one change outweighs every other rule on this page.
Illinois at a glance
Sports betting in Illinois is open to adults 21 and over, online statewide or at a retail counter, as long as the phone or the person is inside Illinois when the wager is made. Retail books opened on March 9, 2020, and mobile apps on June 18, 2020. The Illinois Gaming Board regulates the market.
Three rules set Illinois apart from most of its neighbors. Bets on Illinois college teams are banned. Player props on any college athlete are banned. And the state’s operators pay both a graduated revenue tax and a per-wager tax, the second of which can show up on a bettor’s slip.
How the market was built, then rebuilt
2019 to 2020: law, pandemic, launch
Illinois legalized sports betting in 2019 as part of a broad gaming expansion. Retail sportsbooks opened in March 2020, days before the pandemic shut down live sports, and mobile apps launched that June.
The original law required anyone opening an online account with a casino-affiliated sportsbook to register in person. During the pandemic Governor JB Pritzker suspended that rule by executive order in June 2020, restored it in July, suspended it again in August, and ended the suspension in April 2021. Lawmakers finally removed it by statute, effective Saturday, March 5, 2022, days before March Madness.
2021: a brief window for in-state colleges
The same 2021 legislation also opened a narrow exception: limited in-person betting on Illinois college teams. That exception expired on July 1, 2024. Since then, no bets on Illinois college teams are allowed in any form, online or at a counter, and player props on college athletes from any school remain off the board.
2024 and 2025: two tax increases
In 2024 Illinois replaced its flat 15 percent tax on adjusted gross receipts with a graduated scale. Since July 1, 2024 the rate starts at 20 percent and rises in brackets of 25, 30 and 35 percent to 40 percent on annual receipts above $200 million.
A year later, the budget for fiscal 2026 added the per-wager tax on online bets, effective July 1, 2025. It sits on top of the graduated tax.
The per-wager tax and what it does to a live bet
The per-wager tax is charged to the sportsbook. Whether a bettor ever sees it depends on the operator. Some major books announced a flat surcharge of 25 or 50 cents on every Illinois wager; others absorbed it. Where a surcharge applies, the effect is easy to calculate, and it hits small bets hardest.
Take a 50-cent surcharge on three live bets of different sizes, each at -110:
| Stake | Profit if it wins | Surcharge | Surcharge as share of stake |
|---|---|---|---|
| $2.00 | $1.82 | $0.50 | 25.0% |
| $10.00 | $9.09 | $0.50 | 5.0% |
| $50.00 | $45.45 | $0.50 | 1.0% |
At -110, profit is stake × 100 ÷ 110, so $2.00 wins $1.82. Paying 50 cents to place that bet means a winning ticket nets $1.32 and a losing one costs $2.50. The break-even win rate at -110 without a fee is 52.38 percent, which is 110 ÷ 210. With the fee, a bettor needs to win often enough that $1.32 × wins equals $2.50 × losses, which works out to 2.50 ÷ (1.32 + 2.50) = 65.45 percent. No in-play strategy clears a bar like that on two-dollar bets.
That is the plain verdict: a 50-cent fee makes very small live bets, including most micro bets on the next pitch or the next point, a poor deal in Illinois. On a $50 bet the same fee is 1 percent of the stake, still a cost but one that changes the math far less.
Converting a fee into odds
A fee can be folded into the price, which makes books with and without a surcharge comparable. Take a $10 bet at -110 with a 50-cent fee. A win pays $9.09 profit minus the $0.50 fee, so $8.59 net, while a loss costs $10.50. The total risk is $10.50 and the total return on a win is $10.50 + $8.59 = $19.09, which is decimal odds of 19.09 ÷ 10.50 = 1.818.
Converted back to American odds, 1.818 is about -122. So a -110 line with a 50-cent fee on a $10 stake is roughly the same deal as a -122 line with no fee. If another licensed app offers that market at -115 with no surcharge, the no-fee price is the better one by a clear margin, even though -110 looks cheaper on the screen.
The bigger the stake, the smaller that gap. On $100 the same 50 cents moves the effective price only from -110 to about -111. Anyone who bets in-play in Illinois should run this conversion once for their usual stake size; the answer usually decides which app to open. The implied probability calculator handles the last step.
Is it going away?
A bill to repeal the per-wager tax, HB 5143, was filed in February 2026 by the chair of a House gaming committee. It would have ended the levy on July 1, 2026 and left the graduated tax in place. It was re-referred to the House Rules Committee on March 27, 2026, and no passage had been reported as of October 20, 2026. One major operator waived its surcharge through June 19, 2026, but that was a business decision, not a change in law.
College rules, age and location
The minimum age is 21. Every online bet must be placed from a phone inside Illinois, and the app checks that location before accepting wagers.
On college sports, the rule is stricter than in Indiana next door. Illinois bans all bets on Illinois college teams, so Illinois, Northwestern, Loyola, DePaul and the rest are not on the board, whoever they play and wherever the game is. Out-of-state college games are allowed, but without player props.
Geography makes this visible. A Northwestern fan in Evanston cannot bet on the Wildcats. Drive under an hour to Hammond, Indiana, and the same game can be bet as a team market under Indiana’s rules, though Indiana’s own ban on in-play college player props still applies there. The phone’s location decides which rulebook is in force, and if you are watching from a bar on the Indiana side, it is Indiana’s book that counts.
Illinois’ other neighbors split three ways. Iowa bans player props on athletes from its own schools, Kentucky’s 2026 law bans props on Kentucky college athletes, and Missouri bans props on athletes in games involving Missouri colleges, based on the college column of the state table. Wisconsin allows betting only at tribal casinos, so a drive north from Chicago ends online access entirely once the phone crosses the state line.
Taxes on winnings
Illinois taxes individual income, gambling winnings included, at a flat 4.95 percent. Federal tax applies on top, and the 2025 federal tax law trims the loss deduction to nine-tenths of losses starting with 2026 returns, available to itemizers only.
On the $45.45 profit from a winning $50 bet in the table above, the Illinois income tax is $45.45 × 0.0495 = $2.25. A per-bet surcharge, where one applies, is a cost of betting rather than a loss on a wager, and whether it can count toward the gambling-loss deduction is a question for a tax professional.
Self-exclusion in Illinois, and the changes proposed in 2026
The Illinois Gaming Board runs a self-exclusion program that covers sports wagering and casinos. Enrollment currently has to happen in person at sanctioned sites around the state, and the shortest term reported is five years, with an indefinite option. Someone on the list cannot place or redeem sports wagers.
On September 4, 2026, the Board approved proposals to add six-month, one-year and three-year terms and to open other ways to sign up, such as mail or an online portal. Those changes still have to go through rulemaking and could take years to take effect, so the in-person, five-year minimum is the rule as of October 20, 2026. National help lines are listed on the responsible gambling page.
The side-track: counting bets instead of dollars
US sports betting taxes are normally levied on revenue, the money a sportsbook keeps after paying winners. Illinois added a tax on the count of transactions. That design does something a revenue tax never does: it charges the same amount for a $2 bet as for a $2,000 one.
Supporters saw a revenue source that grows with activity. Operators saw a tax that falls hardest on the in-play and micro-betting products they had spent years building. Within months, reporting showed the number of bets in Illinois falling for several consecutive months, while the per-wager charge raised more than $60 million in its first half-year according to Gaming Board data cited in the repeal debate.
One practical consequence follows directly. A bettor who used to place twenty $5 live bets during a Bulls game would, under a 50-cent surcharge, pay $10.00 in fees before a single result came in.