Washington weighs multi-operator tribal sportsbooks under HB 2526

Washington's tribal sportsbook market is the most disciplined in the country: retail-only, one-operator-per-tribe, on-premise only, and constrained by some of the tightest collegiate restrictions in any state that has legalized. A bill working its way through Olympia would loosen two of those bolts at once. HB 2526, introduced in January and heard for the first time in the House Regulated Substances and Gaming committee earlier this session, would permit each tribal casino to host multiple sportsbook operators and would expand the menu of permissible wagers to include in-state college teams under defined guardrails.

The current framework, in place since the 2020 compact amendments, was designed as a deliberate exercise in caution. Sixteen tribal compacts have been amended to date through the Washington State Gambling Commission, with the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe reaching a tentative agreement on its own amendment last year. Each amended tribe selected one sportsbook brand — generally DraftKings, FanDuel, or BetMGM — and that brand operates exclusively on the tribe's properties. There is no statewide online layer; the bet must be placed on tribal land.

What HB 2526 would change

The bill's two operative provisions are narrow but consequential. First, it would allow each tribe to contract with more than one sportsbook operator. In practice, that means a tribal casino could host both a DraftKings-branded sportsbook and a FanDuel-branded one — or any combination — at the same property, giving the tribe leverage in its commercial negotiations and giving patrons a choice of brand experiences without leaving the casino floor.

Second, the bill would extend the permissible wager menu to in-state college games. Under current law, wagers on Washington State University, the University of Washington, Gonzaga, and other in-state programs are off-limits even at tribal sportsbooks. HB 2526 would lift that exclusion, while retaining strict guardrails: no prop bets on individual player performance, no wagers on in-game coaching decisions such as substitutions or timeouts, and no wagers on officiating decisions like penalty calls.

Gov. Bob Ferguson signed a separate, narrower expansion earlier this year that opened collegiate wagering at tribal sportsbooks for out-of-state games and certain non-revenue sports. HB 2526 represents the logical next step — and the more politically contested one, because it asks legislators to allow betting on Washington's flagship football and basketball programs in a state where the universities themselves have historically opposed in-state collegiate wagering.

The single-operator question

The multi-operator provision is, in some ways, the more structurally important of the two. The single-operator-per-tribe rule was not an accident. It was a constraint negotiated into the compact amendments to make sports betting feel ancillary to the casino floor rather than an open competitive market. It also gave each operator certainty: an exclusive franchise at a known property, in exchange for a meaningful revenue share with the host tribe.

Lifting that constraint would change the commercial calculus for both sides. Tribes would gain bargaining power and the ability to court newer entrants — Fanatics Sportsbook, ESPN BET, or regional brands — at properties where the incumbent has underperformed. Operators, on the other hand, would face the possibility of being displaced or diluted at properties they had built brand presence around. The Washington Indian Gaming Association has not taken a public position on multi-operator, but several individual tribes have signaled interest.

"Multi-operator is a leverage question," a former state gambling commission staffer observed. "It tilts the negotiation back toward the tribes, which is exactly why some operators are uncomfortable and some tribes are enthusiastic."

What is still off the table

What HB 2526 does not do is also worth noting. The bill preserves the retail-only model. There is no provision for statewide mobile sports betting and no provision for off-reservation kiosks of the kind some commercial-state frameworks include. Washington has been one of the most deliberate jurisdictions in resisting a statewide mobile framework, and HB 2526's drafters made the strategic choice to keep that line intact rather than risk losing tribal support by overreaching.

iGaming is also absent from the bill. Tribal operators in Washington have shown limited public appetite for online casino expansion, and the state has shown none. Readers tracking how iGaming is sequenced separately from sports betting in tribal-led states can review our analysis of the Seminole 2026 compact, which addressed the same sequencing question.

For broader context on Washington's tribal gaming structure, our Washington state hub tracks property-by-property operations across the state's twenty-nine tribal casinos. Readers comparing collegiate sports betting frameworks across states can also consult the state-by-state comparison tool for a side-by-side view of which jurisdictions permit in-state college wagering and under what restrictions.

The path forward

HB 2526 received its first public hearing in committee but has not yet been scheduled for a vote. That places it on a slower track than the Minnesota tribal sports betting bill SF 4139, but Washington's session calendar gives the bill more runway. The most likely outcome, in the view of veteran observers, is that the multi-operator provision survives committee while the in-state collegiate provision is narrowed further — perhaps limited to bowl games or NCAA tournament appearances, the structure several Mountain West states have adopted as a compromise.

Either way, the bill marks the first serious attempt since 2020 to reopen the structural parameters of Washington's tribal sports betting framework. Whether the legislature is ready to revisit those parameters — or whether it will defer to the cautious, sixteen-tribe consensus that produced the original framework — will define the second half of the 2026 session in Olympia.