Alabama Tribe Gets Creative With Ways To Legalize Betting

If you’ve spent any time reading this site before, you know the state of Alabama’s betting industry: dead as can be.

The state has quietly become one of the biggest adversaries to the industry. There’s no legal sports betting, casino, not even a lottery. Any efforts to change that by lawmakers have been met with a swift and violent death too.

That’s not sitting well with a certain federally recognized tribe in the area. Seeing the success of other states, this tribe realizes the boon a legal betting infrastructure can have on all parties — for them as operators, lawmakers who score taxes off it, and bettors who want to sling money on their favorite sports.

Enter the Poarch Band of Creek Indians (PCI). They want a legal industry, and they’re changing their gameplan on how to make it happen. Keep reading and we’ll tell you all about their new bold strategy for 2026!

Tribes Will Try A New Strategy

Alabama’s legislative session this year ran from February 4 to May 14 — giving lawmakers three months and change to pass new policies. Obviously, that’s not a lot, especially for a hot-button issue like legal betting (the state remains deeply conservative). This is at the heart of the PCI’s new strategy to create a legal industry.

Instead of showing up during the legislative session and praying something passes, the tribe says they will take a year-round approach to the issue. It would be a year-long blitz that also includes polling, focus groups, and more communication with key lawmakers that can get this issue past the finish line.

“I think too often we wait until the session starts and then we start working for this agenda or trying to push this agenda across the finish line,” said Arthur Mothershed, who serves as the EVP of business development and government relations of PCI’s Wind Creek Hospitality. “I think we’ve got to do a better job of getting the voices of the people heard.” 

A Change Was Necessary

PCI was forced into a corner after how the 2025 legislative session played out. Despite strong public support and even momentum in the House, lawmakers once again failed to get a comprehensive gambling bill passed.

It wasn’t some massive ideological fight that sunk the bill either. It was mostly nitpicking. Senators bickered over revenue distribution and minor tweaks to language. The result? By the time they reached something most people could live with, the session ran out.

This is the latest in a string of defeats on the issue. In 2024, a bill around the matter fell one vote shy of passing. It seems like these defeats are starting to weigh on policymakers too. Take Senator Greg Albritton, one of the most vocal proponents of betting. He floated the idea, half jokingly, that gambling legislation could be dead inside Alabama for the next 20 years.

“We’ve been struggling with this for 25-26 years already,” he said. “I don’t see anything changing.”

So yes, things went backwards in 2025 after coming so close to legalization the year before. PCI recognizes this, hence the mass pivot. No longer are they relying on a few weeks of lobbying during the legislative calendar to have their voice heard. If their words are true, then they’re going district by district, lawmaker by lawmaker, voter by voter. Playing the long game on the issue essentially.

PCI Will Tout Local Support

So just how will the tribe get lawmakers to see their side? Well, by pointing out that most Alabama residents already support the legalization of gambling. Heck, many are betting anyway, doing it via local bookies or popular offshore sportsbooks — money that doesn’t get taxed either.

“We’re already in the process of setting up more polling before the summer even starts, putting together some focus groups so that we can get a better message to the legislators,” Mothershed said. “We’ve done some limited polling on (table games) in the past, but I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job in specific districts, where there are certain legislators that say, ‘hey, my district doesn’t support this,’ to give them information.

PCI wants a comprehensive betting package that includes both casino and sports. Though it’s the casino portion that has lit their eyes up the most. This is because they recently bought the Birmingham Race Course and were ready to pour hundreds of millions into a massive casino resort — whilst creating a ton of jobs in the process. Those plans were put in ice when legislative efforts died.

“Obviously, if a comprehensive bill had passed, we’d have been able to launch some pretty elaborate plans much more quickly than we’re going to be able to right now,” said Mothershed.

If Alabama lawmakers won’t listen to logic or lobbyists, maybe pressure from their own voters will do the trick. That’s what PCI is banking on now — not another rush job during the 2026 legal session, but a year-long squeeze that keeps the issue front and center.

Will it work? No one knows. But one thing is for sure: what was being tried before clearly wasn’t working. So we suppose PCI has nothing to lose by going this new route.