Wisconsin Sports Betting Could Move Online Through ‘Hub and Spoke’ Model
Posted on: October 22, 2025, 08:59h.
Last updated on: October 22, 2025, 09:52h.
- Wisconsin lawmakers are mulling legislation to expand sports betting to the internet
- Wisconsin is home to only tribal casinos
- Sports betting is banned in neighboring Minnesota
Wisconsin sports betting remains limited to in-person wagering at tribal casinos. Newly drafted legislation seeks to expand wagering on professional and college sports to the internet.
Wisconsin is home to 25 tribal casinos owned by 11 compacted tribes. The Badger State doesn’t have commercial casinos. As such, when the US Supreme Court overturned a federal ban on sports gambling, Wisconsin’s sports betting market was left to the tribes.
The in-person betting requirement has greatly hindered the full benefit of sports gambling. In states where both retail and mobile sports betting are allowed, 90% to 95% of the bets and money wagered are facilitated via the internet.
Wisconsin Following Florida’s Lead
This week, a group of lawmakers, with strong bipartisan support in Madison and from the state’s Natives, drafted a law with the assistance of the Legislative Reference Bureau. The statute, yet to be formally introduced to the State Assembly, proposes taking a page out of Florida’s playbook to expand tribal sports betting.
Dubbed the “hub and spoke model,” the measure would expand sports betting online with the legal understanding that if the tribal sportsbook’s computer server remains on Native land, remote bets can be facilitated and still considered a tribal gaming activity.
Florida’s online sports betting expansion with the Seminole Tribe was contested in federal court. The US Supreme Court terminated the case when it refused to review a lower federal court’s decision that agreed with the US Department of the Interior that hub and spoke online sports betting involving tribal lands doesn’t violate the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA).
This bill excludes from the definition of ‘bet’ an event or sports wager made by a person physically located in this state using a mobile or other electronic device if the server or other device used to conduct such event or sports wager is physically located on a federally recognized American Indian tribe’s Indian lands and if the event or sports wager is conducted pursuant to a compact between a tribe and this state under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act,” the online sports betting bill draft reads.
The measure is being supported by Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth), Assembly Minority Leader Kalan Haywood (D-Milwaukee), and state Sens. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton).
Wisconsin’s 2025 legislative session runs through the end of the year.
Big Opportunity
The Wisconsin online sports betting legislative draft doesn’t stipulate whether the state would seek a share of the online gaming revenue like Florida did (10%). There is presumably much money to be made should Wisconsin authorize online sports betting, as neighboring Minnesota has no form of legal sports betting.
Minnesota shares a nearly 300-mile-long border with Wisconsin. Minneapolis and St. Paul, home to almost 2.7 million people, is near the Wisconsin border.
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