Montana’s Board of Horse Racing Is the Gatekeeper
The board, housed within the Montana Department of Commerce, writes the rules that separate legal wagering from a criminal act. Its licensing materials include a dedicated Advance Deposit Wagering Application for an “Advance Deposit Wagering Hub Operator Company,” and the same page lists applications for simulcast facilities, simulcast networks, and simulcast officials. Those categories are distinct: a hub operator holds the key to remote wagering, while a simulcast license covers the in-person broadcast of races at a physical location.
Nothing in the board’s annual reports or online materials suggests that any other state agency or commission can greenlight an online horse bet. The licensing requirement is the controlling fact, and the board’s authority runs directly through the advance deposit wagering statute. Without a board-licensed hub, the transaction is, in the language of the law, “prohibited and illegal.”
How the Interstate Horseracing Act Frames Online Bets
Federal law gives the interstate structure its shape but does not override Montana’s licensing demand. The Interstate Horseracing Act, signed into law as Public Law 95-515 by the Ninety-fifth Congress on October 25, 1978, defines an interstate off-track wager as a legal wager placed or accepted in one state on a horse race taking place in another. Its definition explicitly includes pari-mutuel wagers transmitted by telephone or other electronic media, provided they are lawful in each state involved. No person may accept an interstate off-track wager except as provided by the act itself.
A covered horse race under federal regulation includes a Thoroughbred race that is the subject of interstate off-track or advance deposit wagers. And the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act separately excludes from its definition of unlawful Internet gambling any activity allowed under the Interstate Horseracing Act. The practical effect is that a bet crossing state lines is not a federal crime when both states have authorized it—but the authorization must be real. The federal framework is a permission slip with a state-law condition attached.
What an ADW Account Is—and What Montana’s Records Don’t Show
An advance deposit wagering account is, at its core, a pari-mutuel account maintained by a licensed hub operator. A bettor deposits funds, and those funds are used to place wagers on horse races, often from a different state. The Montana licensing materials confirm that this arrangement requires a specific hub-operator license, but they do not publish a roster of currently licensed companies.
The board’s website offers the application form; it does not list which companies, if any, hold an active license today. The board’s annual reports contain no directory of active ADW licensees. That gap is not a legal loophole—it is an information vacuum. A resident who wants to open an account cannot simply pick a familiar brand and assume it is authorized under Montana law. The operator must be a board-licensed hub, and the board does not publish who currently qualifies.
Simulcasting, the Separate but Related Wagering Channel
Montana Simulcast Racing LLC of Missoula completed another year of simulcasting in 2019, the board’s annual report notes. Simulcasting is the business of taking bets on races broadcast live from an out-of-state track into a licensed Montana facility. It is not advance deposit wagering, though the two often travel together in industry reports.
The board’s 2017 meeting minutes recorded a simulcast network of five locations and observed that advance deposit wagering had increased even as simulcasting revenues declined. Those minutes show the regulator tracking a shift in betting behavior, but they do not erase the legal line between the two channels. A simulcast facility license does not authorize remote online betting; for that, the customer needs the hub-operator pathway.
Where the Handle Goes: Fees That Fund Live Racing
The financial trail offers a partial look at how the system is supposed to work. The 2019 annual report states that source-market fees paid by advance deposit wagering hubs are used to support the live horse-racing industry. Separately, one percent of statewide simulcast handle was returned to the board for operational costs, and one percent of all handle and three percent of exotic handles were paid to the board to support live racing.
Those percentages are payments to the regulator, not a consumer-facing takeout schedule. The report does not frame them as universal betting-deduction rates, and they should not be read as the amount deducted from an individual ticket. They map how a slice of the handle moves back into the sport’s infrastructure inside Montana, a detail that anchors the board’s interest in keeping the licensing regime intact.
The legal architecture comes into focus from two directions. The Interstate Horseracing Act supplies the interstate framework; the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act exempts those wagers from federal prohibition. But in Montana, the statute is blunt: advance deposit wagering is illegal unless it runs through a board-licensed hub. The practical question that remains unanswered is whether any currently licensed hub operator accepts Montana residents. A bettor who wants to wager online must confirm that directly with the board or with the operator, because anything short of a board-licensed hub is, as the law states, “prohibited and illegal.”