The National Football League confirmed on Monday that the NFL Draft is coming to Washington, D.C., in 2027.
But betting from the fan zone on where that season’s quarterback darling is going to land is almost certainly not coming with it.
The NFL said in announcing the move that the draft will be spread over “the District’s most iconic landmarks, including the National Mall and Pennsylvania Avenue.”
It portends to be a huge spectacle. Beautiful. Take that Rocky Steps. The Mall offers virtually limitless space for a draft revelers’ block party on the same grounds where D.C. joggers crunch gravel each day, inauguration speech enthusiasts gather every four years, and tourists try to figure out directions to the Air and Space Museum.
The Mall, however, will be a dead space for Commanders fans or ready-to-boo Jets backers hoping to utilize the five legal and mobile sports betting apps in the District to wager on upcoming picks. The same goes for much of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Gambling is illegal on federal land — which comprises 29% of D.C.’s acreage — where the monuments reside that would provide the scenic backdrop for a draft in the nation’s capitol.
“This is a decent chunk of the District, the designated areas that fall under national parks,” GeoComply Senior Vice President of Compliance Lindsay Slader told InGame, “and then also another jumble of buildings and city blocks that are defined in a specific city code, federal buildings. So that includes the whole National Mall, Washington Monument, some bits around Judiciary Square.”
GeoComply’s map of federal lands in Washington, D.C.:
Locals will get it, tourists will learn fast
Five sportsbooks — BetMGM, Caesars, DraftKings, Fanatics Sportsbook, and FanDuel — offer mobile betting in D.C. outside of the federal zones, and the geo-fenced two-block exclusive areas around Audi Field (FanDuel), Capital One Arena (Caesars) and Nationals Park (BetMGM).
Preparing customers will be important, Slader said.
“For an operator, communication with the player is going to be key,” she said. “There’s the ability to notify the user if they’re attempting to bet from any excluded area, in the exclusion zone, then they can be prompted, to say ‘You’re in a disallowed area,’ and they could be shown a map, they could be guided on what place they would need to locate to in order to place their bets.”
With three legal sports betting markets comprising the “DMV,” local gamblers who might also be commuters should anticipate the inconvenience. Border states Maryland and Virginia both also offer digital betting.
“I’d say perhaps it’s the tourists or the uninitiated crowd that are going to have the biggest challenge to understand what’s happening,” Slader said.
GeoComply was doing a fine job of enforcement as recently as last week.
NFL is wildly popular; draft is harder to quantify, bet
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell predicted Monday that the D.C. draft will draw “well over a million people.” Certainly, not all of them will have a desire or the age qualifications — 18 years of age, minimum in D.C. — to bet on it. But it stands to reason that many of them will, including the Marylanders who have live draft betting available just over the border. Draft betting is not legal in nearby Virginia.
NFL betting is one of the two most important markets in terms of handle and revenue for both sportsbooks and state taxing authorities, and the draft figures to be a contributor. But the logistics of state rules and reporting have made it hard to quantify.
Since 2015, when the NFL began barnstorming the draft, the event has been held in just two cities (Las Vegas 2022, Detroit 2024) whose states had live sports betting markets at that time. And both Michigan and Nevada restrict live-betting the draft.
Pennsylvania does not allow NFL Draft betting, which will likely upset those attending the 2026 installment in Pittsburgh.
D.C. allows it, but the Lincoln Memorial will be far in the distance if anyone really needs to place that wager in 2027.
