Is Bovada legal in New Hampshire? Not by name, not anymore — literally by name, in a letter. New Hampshire didn’t quietly geoblock an IP range or send a warning to affiliate sites. Two state officials put “Bovada” in a cease-and-desist letter, cited the exact statute Bovada was violating, and sent it straight to the source. Most states get there by inference. New Hampshire skipped the inference.
That letter is dated December 12, 2024. Bovada didn’t answer it. It just added New Hampshire to its restricted list about a month later, and the account access that used to work from a Concord or Manchester address stopped working not long after.
Is Bovada Legal in New Hampshire?
No. RSA 287-I, the statute New Hampshire built its sports-wagering market on, authorizes exactly one path: wagers placed through the Lottery Commission’s own licensed operator. Everything else sits outside it, and RSA 647:2 — the state’s general criminal gambling law — only exempts wagering that runs through that RSA 287-I system. Bovada’s broader footprint in the US runs the same way almost everywhere: no state license, an Anjouan and Comoros authorization that satisfies nobody’s domestic regulator, and a legal question that usually gets answered by silence rather than a direct letter. New Hampshire broke that pattern.
RSA 287-I itself dates to July 12, 2019, when Governor Chris Sununu signed HB 480 into law as Chapter 215, creating a Division of Sports Wagering inside the Lottery Commission and barring wagers on New Hampshire college teams or any college game played on New Hampshire soil. Mobile and retail betting went live that December. Every one of those provisions describes a state-run licensing structure. None of them mention an offshore book by name — RSA 287-I:3 just happens to be specific enough that the state didn’t need it to.
The Misdemeanor With No Recorded Case
RSA 647:2 defines gambling as risking something of value on a contingent event you don’t control, in exchange for something of value if it goes your way — language broad enough to cover the person placing the bet, not just the book taking it. Section I lists “gambles” on its own as a misdemeanor, separate from permitting gambling or running a gambling machine. That’s a wider net than Nevada’s statute, which only reaches whoever accepts the wager, or New Jersey’s, which writes a player exemption directly into the criminal code. New Hampshire never bothered carving the bettor out. It just never charged one, either — there’s no public record of a New Hampshire resident prosecuted for using an offshore sportsbook.
The same statute reserves its real teeth for scale, not for a single bettor. Section I-a steps up to a Class B felony once a gambling business clears $2,000 in gross revenue on any single day, stays running for more than 10 consecutive days, or takes in over $5,000 in wagers across any 30-day stretch — thresholds built for whoever’s operating the book, not whoever’s placing money on it from a phone. Bovada, offshore and outside New Hampshire’s reach entirely, was never a target that section could touch even if the state wanted to try.
The December 2024 Letter That Named Bovada Directly
Here’s where New Hampshire’s approach actually diverges from its neighbors. Massachusetts, one state over, still hasn’t sent Bovada anything — Bovada keeps operating there with no restricted-list entry at all, despite a sports betting market roughly eight times the size of New Hampshire’s. New Jersey went after poker affiliates advertising Bovada in 2014 and let Bovada exit on its own terms three weeks later. New Hampshire’s Lottery Commission and Department of Justice skipped both of those detours and wrote to Bovada by name.
What the Letter Actually Said About iGaming
Chief Compliance Officer Cooley A. Arroyo, Esq. and Assistant Attorney General Mark W. Dell’Orfano co-signed the letter, citing RSA 287-I:3 — the section limiting sports wagering to agents competitively selected by the Lottery Commission and approved by the governor and executive council. Bovada, obviously, was never selected or approved. The officials didn’t stop at sports betting, either: the letter stated flatly that “online casino or ‘igaming’ is not authorized in New Hampshire, and there is no legal path for the licensure or operation of such a business” — closing off any argument that Bovada’s casino games sat in a gray area separate from its sportsbook. Bovada never acknowledged receiving it. The restricted-list entry that followed was the only response New Hampshire got.
One Letter in a Wider Wave
New Hampshire wasn’t acting alone, even if its letter landed with unusual specificity. Michigan, Ohio, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Kansas and Louisiana all sent Bovada cease-and-desist letters of their own in 2024, and Tennessee went further that same year, fining Bovada $50,000 outright. By the time New Hampshire’s letter went out in December, roughly twenty states had taken some form of direct action against Bovada’s US-facing operation — a coordinated-looking regulatory push that Massachusetts, for one, still hasn’t joined.
DraftKings’ Monopoly Is the Market New Hampshire Is Protecting
That letter didn’t happen in a vacuum. New Hampshire built its entire legal sports betting market around a single operator, and the state has a direct financial stake in keeping that arrangement exclusive. RSA 287-I lets the Lottery Commission sign with exactly one company, and DraftKings has held that contract since the market opened in December 2019 — no FanDuel, no BetMGM, no Caesars ever got a shot at a New Hampshire license.
Why the Contract Just Got More Exclusive
The Lottery Commission exercised a two-year extension in February 2026, locking DraftKings in through June 30, 2028, with a second option that could stretch it to 2030. In return, DraftKings hands over 51% of online revenue and 50% of retail revenue — a share few other states come close to matching, and one that gives New Hampshire a much bigger reason than most to care whether an unlicensed offshore book is quietly pulling action away from it. The math backs that concern up: New Hampshire sportsbooks handled $845 million in wagers across 2025, then opened 2026 with $90.9 million in January, $70.4 million in February, and $81.3 million in March, kicking $3.3 million to $4.6 million a month back to the state. Online betting carried nearly all of it — 94.34% of March’s handle came through a phone or a browser, not a retail counter.
Moving Money Out of a Restricted New Hampshire Account
None of this touches a balance that was already sitting in a Bovada account before the restriction landed. Standard payout mechanics apply no matter what state blocked new access: crypto withdrawals typically clear in 24 to 48 hours, a mailed check runs 10 to 15 business days from outside the country. The December 2024 letter targeted Bovada’s authority to keep taking New Hampshire action going forward — it was never written to freeze money already on deposit, and RSA 647:2 doesn’t reach a closed transaction either.
The account-level side of this — what DraftKings’ exclusive pricing actually costs bettors, and what a restricted account means day to day — covers the same New Hampshire market from the money angle rather than the legal one. Is Bovada legal in New Hampshire? No, and unlike most states that arrive at that answer through a vague statute and an inference, New Hampshire got there by writing Bovada’s name on a letter and citing the exact line of RSA 287-I it was breaking.