Written for readers in the United States

Reading from the United States: this page names no operator, and here is why

Gambling law in the United States belongs to the states, not to the country. Seven states licence online casino, one more has authorised it without opening, and in the rest it is unlawful, which is why this page carries information and no operator at all.

Why there is no operator on this page

A reader has reached a page written for readers in the United States, and it names no gambling operator because naming one would be unlawful in most of the country and unwise in the rest; the pages on the other side of this site list companies licensed by the Gambling Commission to take bets from people in Great Britain, and a British licence has no standing anywhere in the United States.

Online gambling here is a matter of state law rather than federal law, which means there are more than fifty answers to the question rather than one. The federal statutes that do exist, principally the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, work by referring back to the law of the state where the bet is made or received, so the state is where the answer lives.

What an offshore site cannot do for an American player

The practical argument matters more than the legal one, because the legal risk in almost every state falls on the operator rather than on the player; an operator without a licence in your state has no obligation to pay you, no regulator a reader can complain to, and no supervised route for a dispute, which is a different kind of problem from an illegal one.

A licensed site in New Jersey answers to the Division of Gaming Enforcement, holds player funds under state rules, and participates in a state «self-exclusion» (a refusal the operator is obliged to honour) list that works. An «offshore» (licensed somewhere other than where the player sits) site answers to a regulator in another hemisphere, and the recourse available to a player in Trenton is a polite email. In August 2025 the attorneys general of fifty states and territories jointly asked the Department of Justice to act against «offshore» (licensed somewhere other than where the player sits) operators under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, seeking injunctions, domain seizures and payment interventions. The request itself is the clearest statement of where the official view sits.

If you are in a licensed state

The regulator in each of the seven licensed states publishes a list of the sites it has authorised, and that list is the only one worth using. The Division of Gaming Enforcement in New Jersey, the Gaming Control Board in Pennsylvania and the Gaming Control Board in Michigan all maintain public registers of permitted operators, and a site that is not on the «register» (a list a public authority keeps and publishes) of your state is not permitted to take your money there.

The minimum age for licensed «online casino» in those states is twenty-one, which is three years higher than the British threshold, and it applies to the state a reader is physically in rather than the state you live in. Licensed operators enforce it with location checks that are considerably more intrusive than anything a British site does!

Help, if gambling has stopped being entertainment

The National Council on Problem Gambling runs a national helpline on 1-800-GAMBLER, which is «free and confidential» and reaches a service in a reader's own state. Self-exclusion in the United States is organised state by state rather than nationally, so the scheme that matters is the one run by the regulator where you are.

If a reader is reading this because a British site redirected you here, that redirection is the site working correctly. It is not a judgement about you, and the page you were trying to reach would not have been useful: those operators cannot open an account for somebody in the United States, and the offers on them are quoted in pounds under British rules that do not apply to a reader.

By the UK Pound Casino editorial team · Last updated November 2026