A first-of-its-kind airline partnership is set to launch later this year, potentially bringing games of chance to travelers’ in-flight entertainment lineup.
By the end of 2025, Delta Air Lines plans to roll out new gaming options in collaboration with DraftKings, a digital sports entertainment gaming company that allows users to bet on sports, win money from fantasy leagues, and play classic casino games online.
When the collaboration launches, Delta says that passengers with SkyMiles accounts will be able to access free DraftKings gaming on their personal mobile devices through Delta Sync Wi-Fi. However, the gaming will not include using real money or miles, as that would be illegal.
“There’s federal law explicitly prohibiting gambling [on planes],” says Ryan Butler, a senior analyst at Covers.com, a sports betting information platform. The second major hurdle is that sports betting is allowed on a state-by-state basis but not legal on a federal level. “It’s impossible to do on a plane,” Butler says. “So you have two huge legal roadblocks that are unlikely to change anytime soon.”
Additionally, Delta says that for passengers under 21 years of age, the DraftKings games would not be offered.
Gambling was once allowed for of-age fliers on board international airlines that operated flights to and from the U.S., but Congress outlawed the practice in the mid-’90s. In 1994, when Congress passed a bill to reauthorize the FAA, it added the Gorton Amendment, which “prohibits any air carrier from installing, transporting, operating or permitting the use of any gambling device on an aircraft,” including those aboard foreign airlines, according to Penn State International Law Review.
Delta Air Lines Airbus A330 in flight. (Photo Credit: franz massard/Adobe)
That amendment is still valid today, and it would limit any gambling-based games Delta and DraftKings could roll out.
For now, what’s more likely to launch are games with DraftKings’ branding that emulate casino tables or sports betting, according to Butler. “For instance, games of roulette that you could play in-flight, but you can’t play for real money,” he says. “DraftKings has crowns, their promotional currency, so maybe there’s a way to not wager crowns but earn crowns if you sign up or you play.”
But as for slot machines by the lavatory or roulette wheels in the aisle? “Nothing like that is anywhere remotely close to happening,” Butler says.
Even though in-flight gambling could be a long way off, it’s not outside the realm of possibility to happen down the line. In that regard, Delta’s collaboration with DraftKings would be strategic. “In case something does change, they’ve already started the partnership, so you’re getting in on the ground floor, way ahead of time,” says Butler. “You get on board years before legalization, just in case it does legalize. It’s probably years from it ever happening, but there’s not really a downside to getting this done.”
Butler notes that since the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling to allow state-authorized sports betting, the practice seems to have embedded itself in the American psyche. So, in-flight gambling might be the next wave of that trend, which appears to keep growing in popularity. “It’s amazing how much attitudes have shifted, money has been generated, and interest has grown,” since 2018, he says.
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