How the 2019 law created Illinois racinos
The gaming expansion Governor J.B. Pritzker signed in June 2019 tied gambling to the Rebuild Illinois capital program. It created six new casino licenses, legalized sports betting and, after decades of lobbying by the tracks, made Illinois racinos possible. Any entity holding a racetrack license could apply to the Illinois Gaming Board for an organization gaming license.
That license covers slot machines, video gaming, electronic table games and live table games. A track outside Cook County may run up to 900 gaming positions and a Cook County track up to 1,200. The fees were set at $250,000 for the license itself, plus $17,500 per position downstate or $30,000 per position in Cook County, paid when gaming begins.
Regulators, the age limit and where the money goes
Two agencies share the job. The Illinois Racing Board awards race dates and supervises pari-mutuel wagering, while the Illinois Gaming Board licenses the casino side and publishes monthly revenue reports. Casino gaming is open only to adults aged 21 and over, the same rule that applies at the state’s riverboat and land-based casinos.
The money is tied back to racing. A share of each track’s adjusted gross receipts goes to its purse account, and the operator must invest in the backstretch. Host towns get 3% of receipts and host counties 2%, with separate formulas for Stickney and Collinsville. Three years after opening, a reconciliation payment is due to the state, payable in instalments.
The law also changed the racing side of the ledger. The admission tax rose from 15 cents to 40 cents per person once a track starts gaming, and the pari-mutuel tax moved from a flat 1.5% of handle to a sliding scale between 1.5% and 3.5%. License and position fees from Fairmount went into the Rebuild Illinois fund.
Illinois racinos at a glance
| Venue | City | Racing | Gaming |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fairmount Park Casino & Racing | Collinsville | Thoroughbred, April to October | Nearly 300 slots, live tables since 2026 |
| Track with a license route under the 2019 law | Status in October 2026 |
|---|---|
| Hawthorne Race Course, Stickney/Cicero | Casino license 2020, never built; land sale agreed in 2026 |
| Arlington International Racecourse, Arlington Heights | Never applied; closed 2021, demolished |
| New harness track, south Cook County | License route in the law, no track built |
Fairmount Park, the one that opened
Fairmount Park has raced Thoroughbreds since 1925 on a one-mile dirt oval in the Metro East. Accel Entertainment, a Chicago video gaming company, agreed to buy it in July 2024 for about $35 million, and the Gaming Board gave preliminary approval for a casino that October. A temporary casino inside the grandstand opened on April 18, 2025.
The first phase held 271 slot machines and electronic table games. In spring 2026 a build-out of nearly $3 million added live blackjack, roulette, baccarat and carnival games, and the operator now lists nearly 300 slots. Accel has budgeted about $85 million to $95 million in total, with a permanent casino building on the site expected around 2028.
The licenses that never became casinos
Hawthorne Race Course
Hawthorne, in Stickney on Chicago’s southwest edge, was owned by the Carey family from 1909. The Gaming Board awarded it a casino license in 2020, and the track announced a $40 million project and gutted part of its grandstand. For five years management told the racing board that financing was close. It never arrived, and construction never began.
The end came in 2026. Hawthorne filed for Chapter 11 on February 27, ended its Thoroughbred meet on July 19, and agreed to sell the land to Allimac 2023 LLC for $90 million, a buyer reported to represent a data center developer. The dormant casino license was left unused. No casino ever operated at the site.
Arlington International Racecourse
Arlington, owned by Churchill Downs Inc. since 2000, could have run 1,200 gaming positions. Churchill argued that the tax and purse obligations made a casino there uncompetitive, and earlier in 2019 it had taken a majority stake in Rivers Casino in nearby Des Plaines. It announced the sale of Arlington in February 2021 and ran the last card that September.
The law also reserved a license for a new harness track in the townships of southern Cook County. No such track was built, and with Hawthorne gone, Illinois harness racing has no home of its own. That leaves the list of Illinois racinos at one, and Thoroughbred horsemen look to Collinsville for their only live racing in the state.
The 2026 horse racing calendar
At the September 2025 dates hearing the racing board awarded Hawthorne 63 Thoroughbred programs from late March and Fairmount 57 dates from April 14 to October 27, and cut Hawthorne’s harness meet to 34 programs. By midsummer only Collinsville was still racing, on Tuesdays and Saturdays with a 1:30 p.m. post, carrying the season for Illinois horse racing.
Harness racing did not run in Illinois in 2026 after Hawthorne’s standardbred programs ended. Hawthorne applied in August for both Thoroughbred and harness dates in 2027 despite the sale of its land, and the racing board announced the application on August 4. The horse racing schedule shows the meets running in neighboring states.
Racinos and other casinos in Illinois
A racino is still a small part of Illinois gambling. Riverboat casinos have operated since the early 1990s, the 2019 law added land-based casinos, including one in Chicago, and video gaming terminals sit in thousands of bars and truck stops. The pairing of a pari-mutuel track with a casino, as explained in what a racino is, exists only in Collinsville.
Visitors comparing Illinois racinos with commercial casinos near St. Louis will find Casino Queen in East St. Louis a short drive west of Fairmount, but it has no racetrack. The nearest racinos outside the state are Ellis Park in western Kentucky, Prairie Meadows in Iowa and the two Indiana tracks, which run full casinos year-round.