How to get a gambling licence in New York: by tender

The New York State Gaming Commission regulates all gambling in the state and issues every licence. Online, it licenses one regime for betting, mobile sports wagering, and registers a second for fantasy sports.

• The Commission is a seven-member body within the executive department. The Governor appoints all seven, two of them on the recommendation of the Senate's temporary president and the Assembly's speaker, for five-year terms. Its Division of Gaming runs the licensing.
• No other state body regulates sports wagering licensees. Advertising is regulated by the Commission itself, and federal law (for example the Bank Secrecy Act) applies alongside.
• A mobile sports wagering licence covers sports wagering only. The Commission must also approve each type of wager and each league or organisation on whose contests wagers are offered, before a licensee offers it.
• A platform provider's licence and each skin's licence are separate: each operator must be licensed apart from the platform provider that hosts it. As of 6 November 2026 the Commission lists nine licensed operators. The instruments reviewed do not say whether one skin licence may carry several brands or domains.
• Land-based, for context only: casinos hold a casino sports wagering licence in addition to the casino licence.

Laws that apply

• Racing, Pari-Mutuel Wagering and Breeding Law (PML) s. 1367-a (mobile sports wagering) and s. 1367 (sports wagering, tax)
• 9 NYCRR Part 5330 (mobile sports wagering), with the casino sports wagering rules of Part 5329 and the vendor rules of Parts 5303 and 5307
• PML s. 1326 (licensing of vendor enterprises) and s. 1311 (server hosting payment)
• PML Article 14 and 9 NYCRR Chapter VI (interactive fantasy sports registration)
• Constitution of New York, art. I, s. 9 (gambling)
• Request for Applications: Mobile Sports Wagering Platform Providers, 9 July 2021

A company that wants to take part in New York mobile sports wagering holds one of three kinds of licence, depending on what it does. Only the vendor licence can be applied for now.

• The 2021 round produced the existing licences. On their 2022 licence letters FanDuel, DraftKings, Caesars and PointsBet were licensed as both platform provider and operator; Rush Street Interactive and Resorts World Bet as operators only.
• The number of licences is not capped, but access is by competitive bid. The statute required licences for the two highest-scoring platform providers and at least four operators, and allows additional licences if the Commission decides they are in the best interests of the state, at the same tax rate.
• The Commission's licence letters were issued between 6 January and 25 February 2022 and state no expiry date. Counted from the first letters, ten years ends 6 January 2032 at the latest; that is arithmetic, not a Commission statement.
• Vendor licences are non-transferable (9 NYCRR 5303.12(b)). A licensee must report changes to its application, subject to Commission approval, and disclose material changes as soon as practicable.
• Affiliates, marketing agencies and payment businesses have no licence class of their own. The licensee answers for affiliates and agencies acting for it, and the vendor test of 9 NYCRR 5330.4 applies to a payment business whose services directly relate to the wagering.

No New York entity, office, bank account or resident director is required. What decides eligibility is selection in the Commission's bid for a platform provider, and suitability for everyone.

• Only platform providers and associated skins selected by the Commission in a competitive request-for-applications process may submit a licence application (9 NYCRR 5330.2(a)). That round closed in 2021 and the Commission's Sports Wagering page shows no new round as of 6 November 2026.
• No rule excludes a non-US company, and New York law has no EU or EEA test. Applicants had to list every jurisdiction in which they, their parent and their operators have been licensed or authorised to conduct sports wagering.
• The only physical link to New York is the server: the platform and equipment that accept wagers must sit inside a licensed casino the Commission chooses, because a wager is placed where the server receives it.
• No minimum share capital is set. A licensee must show financial stability, integrity and responsibility, including cash reserves, and hold a cash reserve in an amount the Commission approves to cover outstanding sports pool liability.
• Owners, officers, directors and key persons are investigated as for a casino vendor enterprise. The 2021 bid required a table of ownership (for a publicly held company, owners of five percent or more), an organisation chart, and the names, addresses and experience of directors and officers.
• Affiliates, owners, management and supervisory personnel completed a Multi-Jurisdictional Personal History Disclosure Form with the Casino Key Employee Supplemental Attachment. Key employees are licensed as mobile sports wagering key employees; other staff are registered quarterly.
• Checks are fingerprint-based, run through the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, the State Police and the FBI at the applicant's cost. The form asks about any conviction and requires court documentation of the final disposition.
• A vendor's owners, managers and responsible employees must qualify to casino key employee standards, except residency (PML s. 1326(4)), and the vendor must show valid business registration with the Department of State.

There are two processes. The platform provider bid ran once, in 2021. The vendor application is rolling and begins with a letter of intent or contract with a licensed operator.

• Vendor route, first contact: the Commission's Gaming Licensing page sets the steps. Have a letter of intent or finalised contract with the operator, email the Division of Gaming's enterprise licensing mailbox with a description of the company, the services and the operator concerned, receive the materials, and return the completed application to the same address.
• The vendor application is the vendor application and registration form plus the disclosure forms the Commission sets: the Multi-Jurisdictional Business Form with the Mobile Sports Wagering License Supplemental Attachment, the personal history disclosure forms for owners and management, and a Vendor Employee License Application for employees who service servers or create odds. Every qualifier gives fingerprints and written consent to a criminal history check.
• The Commission processes only complete applications, and processing is not acceptance. No rule or published estimate sets a decision period for a vendor application.
• The 2021 round: the Commission issued the request for applications on 9 July 2021. The Evaluation Committee reported on 1 November 2021 and the Commission voted the award on 8 November 2021. Conditional status was then removed licence by licence, by licence letters dated 6 January to 25 February 2022. Launch was permitted from 8 January 2022.
• The 2021 bid asked for a business plan with market analysis, estimates of gross gaming revenue and their bases, the player acquisition model, advertising and affiliate programmes, the marketing budget and the timeframe to implement mobile sports wagering, and a pricing matrix with the proposed tax rate.
• The statute told the Commission to select platform providers no later than 150 days, to the extent practicable, after the final application was received. The request for applications states two different closing dates, 9 August 2021 in its schedule and 2 August 2021 in its submission section.
• The Commission may contact an applicant after submission to clarify any item, and failure to respond in time may result in rejection. A misrepresentation or missing information in the licence form may result in denial.
• A licensee that has been disciplined, and a casino sports wagering applicant who is denied, may request a de novo hearing before a hearing officer, with the matter decided by the Commission. The provisions reviewed state no deadline for the request and no separate clause on appeal of a denied mobile licence application.

The platform provider carries two fixed payments. Everything else is cost recovery that the rules leave open.

• There is no fixed application fee. The cost of the background investigation is paid by the applicant, proposed operator or vendors, as the Commission directs.
• The statute names no issuance fee for a skin that is not also a platform provider, and the 2021 answer to applicants was that an operator pays no licensing fee.
• Vendors: the application fee is the amount the State Police charge for the anticipated cost of the investigation, and a licence fee "as set forth in the applicable license application" follows approval. The amounts are in the Commission's application form, which it sends after first contact.
• Not capped or published: background investigation costs, the Commission's regulatory-cost assessment (charged to the casino hosting the servers in proportion to the revenue of the skins on the platform, and billed on to the platform provider), the fee for the statutory annual report, laboratory fees and the casino's reasonable and actual costs of housing the servers, billed quarterly.
• No bank guarantee, bond or letter of credit is required. The financial requirement is the cash reserve, plus segregation of bettors' funds from the operator's operating funds.
• No fee is set per additional brand, domain or product. Each new wager type or league needs Commission approval, with no fee stated.
• No responsible gambling levy is set on operators. A share of the mobile sports wagering tax is earmarked by statute: $12,000,000 a year from fiscal year 2027 ($6,000,000 through fiscal year 2026) for problem gambling education and treatment, and $5,000,000 a year for a youth sports programme.

Mobile sports wagering is taxed on gross gaming revenue at a rate set by the 2021 bid, 51 percent. The statute sets only a floor.

• The 51 percent rate comes from the bid, not the statute. Applicants bid 50 percent or more for their preferred scenario, and the Commission accepted licences at 51 percent on 8 November 2021 with a ten-year term. Platform providers added later must pay the same rate. The Commission's monthly report for April 2026 shows gross gaming revenue of $244,127,505, of which $124,505,028, or 51.00 percent, went to the state.
• Gross gaming revenue is all sports wagers received less voided wagers, cancelled wagers and amounts paid out on winning wagers. Promotional spend is not deducted (9 NYCRR 5330.29(g)). Layoff wagers do not change the revenue computed for the platform provider.
• The platform provider pays the tax for itself and its skins, weekly by electronic funds transfer, and files a weekly tax report. A calendar-year recap is due by 28 February.
• There is no minimum fixed amount of gambling tax, no advertising or sponsorship tax and no VAT. New York business corporation franchise tax is 6.5 percent of the business income base, or 7.25 percent where that base is more than $5 million, for taxable years from 1 January 2021 to before 1 January 2030; federal corporate income tax is 21 percent.
• Federal wagering excise tax is 0.25 percent of the amount of a wager authorised under the law of the state where it is accepted, and each person liable also pays a special occupational tax of $500 a year, reduced to $50 where liable only for the tax on state-authorised wagers.
• Players: the operator withholds federal tax at 24 percent where winnings minus the wager exceed $5,000 and the winnings are at least 300 times the wager. New York withholds where the winnings are subject to federal withholding, at 10.90 percent for 2025 and 2026.

There is no game-provider class, because no casino games are authorised online. Suppliers to a licensed operator need a vendor licence, and the platform must sit in a New York casino.

• A supplier of sportsbook software, odds, data, geolocation or similar services to a licensee needs a mobile sports wagering vendor licence. Casino-game aggregators have no online use. The rules do not name hosting or cloud providers; whether an off-site data-centre supplier is a vendor is for the Commission to decide under 9 NYCRR 5330.4.
• The Commission publishes no list of licensed vendors. Its Sports Wagering page names the nine licensed operators, and it must keep a list of licensed testing laboratories on its website.
• No foreign supplier licence is recognised. The Commission may rely on test data from a private laboratory holding a New York casino vendor enterprise licence, or from another state's gaming regulator whose methodology is substantially similar; that is not recognition of a licence.
• All equipment and software must be certified by a licensed independent gaming test laboratory before mobile sports wagering starts. A laboratory must be independent of licensees and hold ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation. Changes and upgrades need Commission approval and recertification.
• The servers that accept wagers must be physically in a casino the Commission chooses, in a restricted area used only for mobile sports wagering, with access logs kept at least five years. The rules do not mention cloud hosting, and the location rule means a commercial cloud region cannot be where wagers are accepted.
• Geolocation is mandatory. Bettors must be physically in New York, and the system must detect circumvention, block wagers from outside the state and give real-time risk feeds. The software is approved by a licensed laboratory with field testing, and any geolocation vendor must hold a vendor licence.
• The Commission gets access to the servers and software used to create wagers and to the wagering data. The rules set no real-time transaction feed of wagers to the regulator.
• Account and transaction records are kept five years. Account and sensitive data are encrypted to AES 256 or other NIST standards. Software is self-checked for unauthorised modification at least every 24 hours.
• No domain in New York or the United States is required. There is no return-to-player rule and no stake or win cap set by law; house rules approved by the Commission set minimum and maximum wagers. Automated betting by software is not allowed.

The minimum age is 21. A bettor must be identified and verified before the first wager, and one state-wide self-exclusion list binds every operator.

• Before the first wager the platform must verify full name, residential address, date of birth, the last four digits of the Social Security number (or a driver licence number), email address and telephone number, through KYC identity-verification software or other remote multi-factor authentication.
• Funding methods are listed in 9 NYCRR 5330.37(d): debit, prepaid, ACH, wire, e-wallets, gift cards and cash at a casino where approved. Credit card funding is limited to $2,500 a year per account with each operator.
• Wagering stops once lifetime deposits exceed $2,500 until the bettor acknowledges the threshold and that responsible gaming limits can be set, and the acknowledgement is repeated each year.
• The Commission keeps one self-exclusion list for all gaming it regulates. An operator must refuse wagers from a listed person. The Commission's responsible gaming and underage play rule proposals are pre-proposals, not law.

Licensed operators may advertise within content rules the Commission applies to mobile licensees. Promotions need approval in advance.

• Every mobile sports wagering promotion (bonuses, odds boosts, risk-free bets, deposit matches) must be submitted for Commission approval at least 15 days before it starts. A complete copy of each advertisement goes to the Commission within five business days of public dissemination.
• No sports wagering advertising may be placed where the foreseeable share of the audience under 21 exceeds the share of the state's population under 21. Marketing aimed at, or designed to appeal primarily to, persons under 21 is barred.
• The licensee is responsible for advertising done on its behalf by an employee, agent or affiliate, and must cause each affiliate to disclose the relationship. Advertising records are kept at least four years.
• An unlicensed operator may not advertise sports wagering to people in the state. A person that is not a licensee may advertise sports gambling in New York only if the advertisement states conspicuously that the offering is not available in the state.

Platform providers file weekly tax reports and annual reports, commission an annual independent assessment, and need the Commission's approval for changes to the platform and to the application.

• Changes to shareholders, owners or directors must be disclosed and are subject to Commission approval; the rule gives no ownership threshold.
• Skins must comply with the casino AML rule as if they were gaming facility licensees: written policies, an AML compliance officer whose name is filed with the Commission, an independent audit, training and a risk assessment. No rule requires the officer to be based in New York.
• Suspicious activity reports go to the federal agency where the licensee knows, suspects or has reason to suspect that a transaction aggregating at least $5,000 involves illegal funds or is designed to evade Bank Secrecy Act requirements.
• The Commission may audit a licensee's books and records. Notices of violation with a fine for sports wagering operators are published on its Violations page.

The one route open as of 6 November 2026 is to supply a licensed operator. A mobile sports wagering vendor licence is held on casino vendor enterprise standards, and the first step is a commitment from an operator.

1. 01

   Secure a letter of intent or contract

   Gaming Licensing page · 9 NYCRR 5330.4

   Agree terms with a licensed mobile sports wagering operator. A letter of intent or a finalised contract is the precondition for applying. A supplier paid a share of an operator's revenue is among those the Commission lists as needing a licence.

2. 02

   Contact the Division of Gaming

   Gaming Licensing page

   Email the Division's enterprise licensing mailbox with a description of the company, the services you provide and the operator concerned. The Commission then sends the application materials.

3. 03

   Prepare the persons and the forms

   PML s. 1326(4), (7), (8) · 9 NYCRR 5307.5

   Owners, managers and employees with responsibility for the services complete the casino key employee application, or a vendor employee licence application. Every qualifier is fingerprinted and consents to a criminal history check. Include proof of business registration with the Department of State.

4. 04

   Return the complete application and pay the costs

   9 NYCRR 5303.8 · 5303.13

   Return the application to the same mailbox. The Commission processes only complete applications. Pay the investigation cost the State Police charge and the licence fee set in the application, by electronic funds transfer. No decision period is published.

5. 05

   Deliver to the standards and keep the licence current

   9 NYCRR 5330.5 · 5330.10

   Supplied equipment and software are certified by a licensed laboratory before launch. Disclose any material change in business form or activity as soon as practicable. The default term is five years, renewable on the Commission's form and fee.

Closed as of 6 November 2026. The steps below are those of the 2021 round and show what a new round would be likely to require; the Commission has announced none.

1. 01

   Watch for a request for applications

   PML s. 1367-a(7)(d)

   The Commission may award additional licences if it decides it is in the best interests of the state, and its Sports Wagering page lists only the 2021 materials. Only an applicant selected in the process may submit a licence application.

2. 02

   Prepare the bid

   RFA of 9 July 2021 · PML s. 1367-a(7)(b)

   The 2021 bid carried an executive summary, ownership and organisation charts, a sub-binder for every hosted operator, a technical proposal, a pricing matrix with the proposed tax rate, and the signed non-collusion certification. Paper copies in binders, an electronic copy and a redacted electronic copy were required.

3. 03

   Complete the licence forms and background checks

   RFA Appendix E

   Affiliates, owners and management complete the personal history disclosure forms, and fingerprints are taken. Background investigation costs fall on the applicant, the proposed operator or its vendors, as the Commission directs.

4. 04

   Pay the licence fee and meet the conditions

   PML s. 1367-a(3) · 1311(3)

   Pay $25,000,000 within 30 days of Commission approval and before the licence is issued. The platform provider also pays $2,500,000 a year to host its servers in a casino. Submit each skin's agreement with the platform provider before that skin is licensed.

5. 05

   Certify, then launch

   9 NYCRR 5330.8 · 5330.10

   Have equipment and software certified by a licensed laboratory, put the servers in the casino the Commission chooses, and have the internal controls approved before operations. In 2021 the Commission removed each licensee's conditional status by licence letter before launch.

The one online route with a defined registration process and no competitive bid. It covers paid-entry fantasy contests only, not betting.

1. 01

   Confirm the product is a fantasy contest

   PML Article 14

   Paid-entry contests only, with participants aged 18 or older. Each platform and each type of contest must be reviewed and approved by the Commission. A registered operator is not offering gambling under Penal Law Article 225.

2. 02

   Apply for registration

   PML s. 1402 · 9 NYCRR 5601.1

   Use the registration form on the Commission's Interactive Fantasy Sports page. Officers and directors are fingerprinted, and the rules extend fingerprinting to 10 percent shareholders and others who file personal history disclosures. No registration fee is stated in Article 14 or Chapter VI.

3. 03

   Protect contestant funds

   9 NYCRR 5605.5-5605.7

   Hold contestant funds through a special purpose entity and trust accounts or, in place of them, furnish a surety bond in favour of the state equal to all contestant funds. Keep an account with funds to cover regulatory cost estimates.

4. 04

   Pay the tax and renew

   PML s. 1407 · 9 NYCRR 5610

   Pay 15 percent of gross revenue plus 0.5 percent capped at $50,000 a year, filing Form IFS-1 by the 10th of each month. Registration lasts three years and is renewed on the Commission's form.

Tier-ordered: official government first, then practitioner, then trade media. Every primary figure was read from the in-force text on 6 Nov 2026.