Sports Betting In The U.S. Virgin Islands

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No sports betting statute exists in the USVI. The territory’s gambling framework runs on two laws: the Casino and Resort Control Act of 1995 (32 V.I.C. ch. 21), which licenses the territory’s land-based casinos on St. Croix, and the Internet Gaming and Internet Gambling Act, passed August 2, 2001, which nominally covers online wagering but has never been operationalized. Neither law licenses a sportsbook, online or retail, and no regulator has ever issued a sports betting license in the territory.

The Virgin Islands Casino Control Commission (VICCC) is the body that would license and regulate sports betting if a law passed, with the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Justice’s Division of Gaming Enforcement acting as its investigatory arm. Today the VICCC’s actual authority covers the two licensed casinos on St. Croix and the framework built around them. It has no sports betting rulebook to enforce because the legislature hasn’t given it one.

The 2001 Internet Gaming and Internet Gambling Act is the closest thing the USVI has to an online wagering statute, and it has sat unused for more than two decades. A 2004 letter from the U.S. Attorney’s office froze implementation over Wire Act concerns before the territory ever wrote regulations for it, and none have followed since. A 2013 V.I. Attorney General opinion concluded that internet gambling was “already legal” under the 2001 act, but that opinion never translated into licensing, regulations, or an actual online sportsbook. This dormant law is worth naming directly because it’s the likeliest source of any claim that the USVI authorized sports betting years ago. It did not. The 2001 act was never about sports betting specifically, and it was never implemented for anything.

A common mix-up is worth clearing up on its own. Puerto Rico legalized sports betting in 2019 and launched licensed retail and online sportsbooks in 2022, a real, functioning market with a 12% tax on operator revenue. The U.S. Virgin Islands is a separate territory with a separate legislature, and it has done none of that. The two are easy to conflate because both are Caribbean U.S. territories with a casino industry, but only one of them has a sports betting law on the books.

The USVI’s push toward a real sports betting law is active, just unfinished. The VICCC began drafting modernization amendments in 2024 with testing lab Gaming Laboratories International, and a July 2025 gaming summit brought stakeholders together specifically to push internet gaming and sports betting legislation, with Commission chair Marvin Pickering calling sports betting a major driver of the effort. As of this writing, those bills have not cleared the 36th Legislature. The direction is toward legalization, but nothing is law yet, and there’s no confirmed timeline for when, or whether, that changes.

The USVI does have real, licensed land-based gambling. Two casinos operate on St. Croix under the 1995 Casino and Resort Control Act, and that’s often where the confusion about sports betting starts, because a territory with legal casino floors seems like a natural fit for a sportsbook counter next door. It isn’t there yet. The 1995 act licenses table games and slots specifically; it doesn’t authorize a sportsbook window, and neither St. Croix casino currently runs one.

Residents and visitors who want to bet on sports from the USVI do it through offshore sportsbooks licensed elsewhere, and nothing in territorial law blocks that access or targets individual bettors. There’s no local prosecution record for USVI residents placing bets with an offshore operator. The USVI sits under the same federal framework as the rest of the country. That federal exposure is why the 2001 internet gambling law stalled in the first place, over Wire Act concerns. The practical result is a gray zone: using an offshore sportsbook isn’t treated as a local crime, but no USVI-licensed alternative exists to use instead.

There’s no sports betting age to report in the USVI, because there’s no licensed sports betting product to attach one to. That’s worth stating plainly, since it’s easy to find conflicting numbers online. The closest reference points are the territory’s existing gambling laws: the St. Croix casinos, under the 1995 act, set their gaming floor age at 21, and the U.S. Virgin Islands Lottery sets its minimum at 18. Neither of those numbers is a “sports betting age,” because no sports betting law exists yet to set one.

The USVI generally mirrors the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, administered locally by the Virgin Islands Bureau of Internal Revenue, which is why gambling winnings are typically treated as ordinary taxable income in the territory. That mirror-code structure is well established, though the Bureau’s current guidance on gambling winnings specifically hasn’t been independently re-verified here, so bettors should confirm their own filing situation rather than treat this as tax advice.

The USVI does not currently publish its own responsible-gambling hotline or support program tied to sports betting. Anyone concerned about their play should use the tools built into their sportsbook account, such as deposit limits or self-exclusion, since no territorial resource exists yet to point to instead.

Roughly 39 states plus Washington, D.C. have some form of licensed sports betting as of September 2026, and the top-rated U.S. sportsbooks reflect that mix of state-licensed and offshore operators depending on where a bettor is located. The USVI isn’t part of that count. A bettor physically in the territory is in the same position as someone in a state that hasn’t passed a sports betting law: offshore books are the only option, not a state-licensed app.

The USVI has no local daily fantasy sports platform and no licensing framework built for one, so DFS players in the territory use the same national offshore-facing sites that mainland players use. Horse racing lands in the same position. There’s no USVI-licensed racebook, and lawmakers haven’t taken up racing wagering as its own legislative track the way some states have, so bettors interested in racing use offshore racebooks for events run outside the territory. Neither activity has its own USVI statute. Both are accessible offshore only, with no licensed local alternative for either one.

The territory splits across three main islands: St. Thomas and St. John form one district, and St. Croix, the larger of the two districts, forms the other. St. Croix carries the two licensed casinos and a good share of the territory’s gaming interest as a result. St. Thomas, home to the territorial capital of Charlotte Amalie, sees a heavy tourism flow that brings visitor betting interest along with it, particularly around U.S. mainland sports airing on cable and streaming.

Because every sportsbook available to USVI bettors is based offshore and serves a largely U.S. audience, the sports menu mirrors what a bettor on the mainland would see: NFL, NBA, and MLB draw the heaviest action, with college football and basketball close behind during their seasons. The territory has its own point of local pride in that mix. St. Croix native Tim Duncan remains one of the most recognizable athletes to come out of the USVI, and Spurs games still draw extra attention from bettors in the territory as a result. Soccer and cricket, popular across much of the Caribbean, see comparatively modest betting interest here next to the American major leagues.