The US iGaming patchwork: 7 casino states, 30 betting states

There is no federal gambling regulator in the United States. Online gambling is authorised, taxed and policed state by state, on top of a thin federal frame — the Wire Act of 1961, which governs interstate transmission of sports-betting information, and the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006, which targets payments to unlicensed operators. Everything else is a fifty-state mosaic, and the most important fault line runs between online casino and online sports betting.

Two products, two very different maps

Online sports betting spread rapidly after the Supreme Court struck down the federal betting ban in 2018. It is now regulated in roughly 30 states plus the District of Columbia. Online casino — iGaming proper, meaning slots and table games — has spread far more slowly. It is live in just seven states: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, West Virginia, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island, with Maine reported as legalising to become the eighth, its launch still pending. The gap between the two maps is the single most important fact about the US market: betting is broadly available, casino is not.

Three states, three tax models

The state-by-state approach produces sharply different economics. New Jersey, regulated by the Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE), moved on 1 July 2025 to a unified 19.75% rate on iGaming, online sports betting and DFS — up from the previous 15% and 13% — after a proposed 25% rate was beaten back. Pennsylvania, under the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB), runs one of the most punishing schedules anywhere: 54% on online slots, 16% on online table games and 36% on sports betting. Michigan, overseen by the Michigan Gaming Control Board (MGCB), taxes iGaming on a graduated 20–28% of GGR and online sports betting at 8.4%.

Those spreads matter enormously to operators. A slot spin generates radically different post-tax economics in Pennsylvania than in New Jersey, and product and marketing strategy has to be built state by state rather than nationally. Licensing is equally fragmented: New Jersey ties an Internet Gaming Permit to an Atlantic City casino, Pennsylvania issues separate interactive certificates by product, and Michigan links an operator licence to a commercial or tribal casino.

Liquidity and the poker exception

The one place the states have chosen to cooperate is online poker. Pennsylvania joined the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA) in April 2025, allowing licensed poker players to be pooled across member states — the US answer to the liquidity problem that makes small single-state poker markets unviable.

The federal-versus-state flashpoints

Two disputes are testing the limits of the state-by-state model. The first is sweepstakes casinos. A wave of state bans began with Montana’s SB 555 (signed May 2025, effective 1 October 2025), followed by California’s AB 831 (signed October 2025, effective 1 January 2026) and moves in Connecticut, Nevada, New York and others — roughly eight states enacting explicit bans, alongside cease-and-desist campaigns from regulators in Pennsylvania and Michigan. The second is prediction markets. State regulators in New York, New Jersey, Arizona and elsewhere have sent cease-and-desist letters to operators such as Kalshi, while the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has asserted exclusive jurisdiction over event contracts and litigated against several states — an unresolved federal-versus-state turf war heading further into 2026.

Why it matters

For international operators and suppliers, the US is not one market but dozens, each with its own licence, tax rate and enforcement posture. The practical consequences are concrete: market-entry planning is a state-by-state exercise; the casino-versus-betting split determines which product can even be offered; and the sweepstakes and prediction-market fights mean the boundaries of what counts as regulated gambling are actively contested, sometimes between two arms of government at once.

The through-line is that federal-versus-state ambiguity is now a business risk, not just a constitutional curiosity. Teams tracking new state launches, tax changes and the sweepstakes/prediction-market disputes can follow them in the iGaming regulatory tracker, and set the US picture against Europe’s in the State of European iGaming 2026 report.

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