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Online gambling in South Carolina

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Online gambling is a popular pastime enjoyed by many across the world. In this article you will learn we will stick to online gambling in South Carolina though. This includes letting you know all the laws surrounding gambling in the state, how to gamble, and best sites to gamble online in SC. Read on to find out more.

Best online gambling sites in South Carolina

PointsBet South Carolina Best gambling site for betting promos
FanDuel South Carolina Best gambling site for app betting
DraftKings South Carolina Best gambling site for new bettors
BetRivers South Carolina Best gambling site for in-game betting

While waiting for online gambling in South Carolina to be legalized, you can already get to know some of the online platforms that are planning to launch in the state.

The sub-section below contains some of the best online gambling sites that may become available in South Carolina, their value proposition, and other key details. This way, you can already compare their offerings to make the right decision once online gambling becomes legal in the of SC.

DraftKings South Carolina

DraftKings provides a platform where players can potentially engage in online gambling in South Carolina. Paul Liberman, Jason Robins, and Matthew Kalishhe established the company in 2012 in Boston, Massachusetts. DraftKings has around 8 million users.

The company can enable prospective bettors in South Carolina to join daily and weekly fantasy sports competitions. If you can correctly bet on certain performance statistics of individual players in major sports leagues, you can win these contests.

Some of the U.S. major leagues that DraftKings covers include the NHL, the MLB, the NFL, the PGA, and the NBA. It also offers an online casino where you can play some of the typical casino games such as Blackjack, Slots, Live Dealer, Roulette, and others. These games can be played on any device.

BetRivers South Carolina

BetRivers is an online sports betting platform from Rush Street Interactive (RSI). RSI claims to be the pioneering company to release legal online sports betting platforms in the states of Pennsylvania, Colorado, Indiana, and Illinois.

Several gaming stalwarts in the industry founded RSI. It started launching several online gambling sites in 2016. The company has already received several awards for its sports betting solutions.

The BetRivers South Carolina platform offers a huge selection of sports betting options daily. It provides online gambling and mobile sports wagering in several states.

FanDuel South Carolina

FanDuel’s offerings include an online gambling platform. With FanDuels’ platform, South Carolina players can soon bet on popular sports, join fantasy sports contests, wager on an online casino, and place bets on horse racing events. The company was founded by several gaming pioneers in 2009. Its online gambling platform is available in several states such as West Virginia, Indiana, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

FanDuel currently holds the largest sports betting market share at around 40%. It also has received several awards and recognition from the gaming industry for its web and mobile platforms. It now has around 6 million users.

PointsBet South Carolina

PointsBet is an online sports betting site in the U.S. It is currently owned by Flutter Entertainment. The company was founded in 2015 in Australia. It has a headquarters in Denver, Colorado.

The platform has many sports leagues offerings that you can bet on. These leagues include the NCAAF, the MLB, the NCAAB, the NBA, and the NFL. PointsBet focuses on providing in-play betting. This can allow you to place micro-bets while the event is still ongoing.

South Carolina’s view on gambling

When it comes to gambling, South Carolina is one of the states that has one of the most negative views toward gambling. The latest NCPG survey revealed that around 75% of the respondents from the State likened it to drug and alcohol addiction. This is somewhat expected since South Carolina is in the heart of the Bible Belt of America. The state will also penalize you if you will gamble during the Sabbath Christian holy days.

Given this premise, it is no wonder that the state is not that keen on pursuing the legalization of retail and online betting in South Carolina. Bettors in the state cannot gamble online in South Carolina.

There are some offshore gambling options but these platforms typically do not have credible backgrounds. Nevertheless, the NCPG survey indicated that 73% still participated in some form of gambling activity in South Carolina.

Online gambling in South Carolina is not yet legal. Legislators here have not yet approved a bill that allows online wagering. Even if the US Supreme Court already overturned the anti-gambling PAPSA law, SC legislators still have not yet made solid progress on any bill that can legalize online sports gaming in South Carolina.

Residents of the state can still participate in legal gambling activities such as state lotteries and daily fantasy sports competitions. However, legislators are still not allowing true gambling operations that involve betting games such as sports betting, poker, slots, blackjack, and others.

Other bettors in the state who are bent on gambling online have tried several offshore gambling platforms. The operators of these platforms are usually based in other countries or states where online betting is already legal. However, playing online still has some legal implications within the state even if the operators of these offshore platforms are based in other locations.

Furthermore, some of these sites may not be reputable. This might result in some personal money loss if you have some disputes with them. Those who will experience this might not find any legal recourse to turn to in these cases.

South Carolina also does not have tribal casinos within its jurisdiction. If you want to play some games in a casino or in another facility, you will need to cross to another state where online sports betting is legal. Some of these states where online betting or some form of it is legal include New Jersey, New Hampshire, Illinois, Colorado, Indiana, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and others.

South Carolina state lottery

Around 54% of South Carolina voters have chosen to support the establishment of a state-operated lottery in SC in November 2000. In June 2001, the state’s general assembly approved the SC Education Lottery Act (2001 – Act 59). The governor then approved the law, leading to the establishment of the South Carolina Education Lottery (SCEL) in 2002.

The SC lottery does not have an online platform in the true definition of the term. You still need to go to various licensed retail outlets to purchase their tickets. However, they do have the SC Players’ Club app.

You can download this app from either the iOS or the Google Play Store. With this app, you can check the status of your tickets, find a local retailer, look at the games’ results, and join contests. They offer various game varieties such as scratch-offs, scratch-off number games, and other typical lottery games.

Who regulates online gambling in SC?

The South Carolina Lottery Commission regulates all forms of gambling in SC, both in future online platforms and in retail sites. The commission also has the power to impose regulations on gambling platform providers in the state.

In South Carolina, there are many online gambling games that are poised to become popular with bettors once online gambling becomes legal in the state. We have compiled some of the crucial information surrounding these games in this subsection:

Sports betting

South Carolina sports betting involves placing your wager in various sports statistics such as players’ performance and game scores. Players place their wagers mostly on major league football, hockey, basketball, cycling, boxing, mixed martial arts, and other popular sports. The games can be amateur or professional types of events.

Some sports betting events can also include non-athletic ones such as animal competitions (horse racing, cockfighting, greyhound racing, and others). These betting events can also be focused on entertainment events such as the Oscars, the Grammys, the Emmys, and other popular shows.

There are several types of bets that you can place on online sports betting sites. These are the moneyline bets, spread betting, over/under bets, proposition bets, and parlays.

  • Moneyline bets – Moneyline betting is the most basic of all betting types. It involves betting on which team will emerge victorious. If the team you bet on wins, you will also win, regardless of the final score.
  • Spread betting – This type of betting aims to even out the odds between two opposing teams where one has more advantage over the other. Sportsbooks typically designate a spread or a line to attain the same level of action on both teams. As an example, if one team has a 3 point advantage over another, that team has to win by at least three points if you bet on them using spread betting.
  • Over/under bets – For this type of bet, the sports betting platform will forecast a certain number for a statistic in a gaming event. You can then place your bet on whether the actual statistic will be either higher or lower than the forecasted number.
  • Proposition bets – This type of bet involves wagering on whether a certain event will happen or not during the course of a game. The event often does not impact the game’s final result. This type of bet can be lucrative even if it appears that they only provide some entertainment value. An example will be if you will wager on the number of passing yards that a certain popular football player can accomplish.
  • Parlays – Parlay bet, also known as accumulator or combo wager is a type of bet that typically links more than two single bets. The winning parlay will depend on all these betting components winning together.

Blackjack

Blackjack is one of the usual games that you can play in an South Carolina online casino. The game involves decks of 52 cards. It evolved from Twenty-One, another type of casino banking games.

The Blackjack players do not really battle each other out. It is in essence a comparison-type of card game where each participant goes against the dealer. The setup of the semicircular blackjack table involves the dealer facing around 5-9 players.

One way that you can win is to come up with card totals that are more than the sum of the dealer’s cards. The totals should not go over 21. A player total of 21 involving just the first two cards is referred to as a “natural” or “blackjack.” When this is the case, the player is the winner unless the dealer also came up with the same total. This will result in a tie-breaker step.

Roulette

Roulette is also one type of casino game. The name came from the French phrase that means “little wheel.” When playing, you can opt to place a wager in various ways. The bet can be against a single number, several number groupings, red or black, odd or even, or if the resulting numbers belong to a higher or lower range.

To know the winning number, the croupier will spin the roulette in one direction while spinning a ball in the opposite direction around the outer edge of the wheel. The ball will eventually fall into a slot in the wheel that has a corresponding number. The player who has placed a bet on this number is the winner.

Craps

Craps is another type of game that casinos include in their playing catalogs. The game involves tossing a pair of dice. Players can bet on specified numbers or sets of numbers that will turn up after each roll made by the pair of dice.

The game involves playing in rounds and players can bet on either “pass” or “don’t pass” as the outcome of each round. There are other variants of dice combinations that you can bet on. Some of these rolls are referred to as “snake eyes”, “ace deuce”, “hard four”, “easy four”, “fever five”, “easy six”, “natural”, and “seven.”

Fantasy sports

Fantasy sports are virtual games where you can act as an owner or general manager of a professional sports league. You can trade, draft, drop, or recruit proxies of real professional players to join your virtual team.

These teams and players can then contend against each other within the threshold of their statistical performances in real games. Their performances can be turned into points that can be consolidated and summed up based on a chosen roster by each team owner.

Other online gambling games

Other online gambling games that online sports betting platforms offer include live dealer, video poker, slots, poker, baccarat, bingo, and others.

  • Live dealer games – You can participate in these games online on the sportsbooks’ platforms. In place of a computer dealer, you get to play with a human dealer on the live streaming screen.
  • Video poker – Another online gambling game that you can find in casinos is the video poker. It is derived from the five-card draw poker game. You can access the game through a virtual console that has the same size as a slot machine.
  • Slots – You can also find virtual slot machines on online gambling platforms. Like their physical counterparts, these virtual slots also feature spinning reels with symbols. Instead of handles, you can virtually spin the reels after you place your wager. Once the images line up, you will win a prize.
  • Poker – Online gambling platforms also offer a virtual poker game. This game has many variants. It involves comparing cards where the participants can bet on which hand is the most favorable based on the agreed-upon rules for that particular game.
  • Baccarat – This is also a card-based game that is commonly included in the game selections of online gambling platforms. It is a guessing game that involves betting on whether the banker or the player has the upper hand.
  • Bingo – Online gambling platforms also offer a virtual version of the bingo card game. Instead of numbered balls, the virtual version uses a random number generator to come up with playing numbers. As with the card version, the players will cross out the given numbers on the virtual cards. Once the randomly-generated numbers line up on their cards, they will win.

Online gambling bonuses in South Carolina

Online sports betting platforms will soon flood the gaming market in South Carolina. Soon, these online sportsbooks will have to compete with each other to attract customers to bet on their platforms. To be noticed by customers, they will need to market more effectively.

They will also need to be more generous with their betting bonus offers. We listed down some examples of the bonuses or promotions that sportsbook operators typically offer to their clients below. To claim these bonuses, you need to comply with the terms and conditions that these sportsbooks indicated on their sites.

  • Sign-up or welcome bonus: Sports betting apps in South Carolina offer welcome bonuses for those who will sign up for the first time on their platform. They will match a certain portion of the amount that you deposited up to a certain threshold. If you are a new customer, they will usually match 100% of the amount that you deposited. As an example, DraftKings has a sign-up bonus that can reach a maximum of $1,000.
  • Risk-free bet: Sportsbooks also offer a risk-free bet bonus that will let you claim something back even if you made a bad betting decision. Typically, you can get back a credit or a free wager that will correspond to the amount that you lost. All major sportsbooks offer this bonus in some form or another. PointsBet’s platform offers two risk-free bets with a threshold of $2,000.
  • Deposit bonus: The terms of the deposit bonus are similar to the mechanics of sign-up bonuses. However, you can still claim this bonus even if you are not a first-time bettor on the platform. Sports betting platforms will give you a matching portion of the money that you deposited into your account up to a specific maximum amount. BetMGM is one of the sportsbooks that offers a $1,000 deposit match. They will also throw in a $25 no-deposit bonus on top of this.

Timeline of gambling in South Carolina

As we mentioned above, the state has not yet legalized gambling in most forms. Players also cannot gamble online in South Carolina. There are also no casinos with online gambling acceptable in South Carolina. To understand the current state of gambling in the state, the sub-section below contains the gambling timeline in South Carolina:

  • 1800s. In 1802, the state’s legislators made some changes to South Carolina’s constitution to prohibit all types of gambling. They also added some provisions that included criminal penalties for those violating the gambling laws.
  • 1990s. During the 1990s, the state started to have some problems with the proliferation of video poker machines. The state commissioned several consultants and experts to fully analyze the pros and cons of these machines. They conducted interviews and focus group discussions with SC residents. Based on their findings, they made some recommendations to the state.
  • 2000s. The state eventually banned the use of video poker machines in 2000. In November 2000, the majority of the state’s voters supported the proposal to put up a lottery in South Carolina that will be operated by the state.
  • June 2001. South Carolina’s legislative body passed the SC Education Lottery Act (2001 – Act 59). With the approval of the law, the state launched the South Carolina Education Lottery (SCEL) in 2002.
  • 2006. The Catawba Tribe filed a lawsuit to exercise their right to offer video gaming on the properties within their reservations. They cited the gambling operations of tribes in other states and their native inherited property rights to strengthen their case. However, these reasons were not strong enough to win the case.
  • 2015 onward. When 2015 rolled in, State Representative Todd Rutherford authored a commercial casino bill in his attempt to re-establish some gambling activities in the state. However, the bill did not gain any traction.
  • From 2020 to 2021. Rep. Rutherford filed several versions of his gambling bill in his attempt to make it legal for sports betting and other gambling activities to happen in South Carolina. In his bill, he included key gambling activities such as horse racing, electronic gaming devices, card games, and other similar games.
  • 2022. Rep. Rutherford felt that 2022 might be different because of the bipartisan advocates and the rising popularity of online gambling. He is also confident that his gambling bill will pass this time. There are already several large companies such as Caesars, MGM, and other sports betting firms that want to establish an online betting platform in the state. Those who support the bill also highlighted the $40 million revenue that South Carolina will earn from these gambling activities.

FAQ

Whow do I know what is legal to bet on in SC and what’s not?

To determine what is legal to bet on in SC, you can read through various credible sources such as the South Carolina Lottery Commission’s website, SC state websites, and the guide above. You can also get more information from the websites of associations such as The National Council on Problem Gambling and the American Gaming Association.

Are offshore gambling sites in South Carolina safe to play on?

No. Offshore gambling sites in South Carolina are not safe to play on. Companies that operate these sites are usually located in other countries. Some of these companies may not even have a license to operate legally. If you have money disputes with these offshore sites, it will be difficult to retrieve your money and resolve this satisfactorily. U.S. entities do not have jurisdiction over these sites.

Will South Carolina tax my online gambling winnings?

Yes. Like in other states where online gambling is already legal, South Carolina will surely impose a tax on your online gambling winnings once it is already legal to engage in this activity. As per the IRS, all gambling-related winnings in any state are taxable. Currently, South Carolina is already imposing an income tax to all lottery prize winnings.