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With Luckity.com, Churchill Downs moves beyond horse races into online real-money gambling

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Churchill Downs has been synonymous with horse racing since the first running of the Kentucky Derby (which actually started in 1875). Now the company is moving into real-money online gambling — beyond horse racing — thanks to a quirk in interstate gambling law.

Real-money online gambling is illegal in most states in the U.S. — except when it comes to live horse racing. Gamblers can bet on the horses via online web sites. But now Churchill Downs’ Luckity.com subsidiary has started a number of casino games — such as daily jackpots and slot machines — in which players can put down real bets and win cash prizes.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.