Maine Releases a Third Draft of Its Online Casino Rules
Maine's Gambling Control Unit published a third working draft of its online casino regulations on September 30, opening a public comment period that runs through October 30. The new draft revises rules first circulated in July, as the state continues working toward a launch with still no announced date for its online casino market.
A tribe-exclusive market still taking shape
Maine became the eighth US state to legalize online casino gaming in January, with access limited exclusively to the state's Wabanaki tribes rather than open commercial licensing — no outside operator can obtain a direct Maine iGaming license independent of a tribal partnership. Nothing in the September draft changes that core structure; the changes are mostly technical and procedural.
Live dealer games get more flexibility
The most notable change loosens where a live-dealer studio can physically sit. The server that accepts and stores wagers must still be located in Maine, but the draft drops a prior requirement that the broader backend infrastructure — game engines, random number generators, and related systems — also be sited in-state. The draft defines "live dealer games" for the first time, as games run by a licensed human dealer operating physical equipment and streamed to players in real time, and requires quarterly on-site audits of any out-of-state studio, with the licensee covering the regulator's travel costs.
Faster approval for already-certified games
Under July's draft, every new game needed individual written sign-off from the gaming director before it could launch. The September version lets lab-certified games within previously approved categories go live after notifying the regulator rather than waiting for a case-by-case decision, and routine patches or bug fixes only need to be logged internally rather than separately approved.
New branding and self-exclusion rules
The draft also adds a requirement that any advertising name a benefiting Wabanaki tribe with equal-size billing alongside the operator's own branding, bars marketing aimed at anyone under 21, and shifts the state's self-exclusion list to an automated, real-time system shared directly with operators, replacing a manual email-and-fax process. Exclusion length options (one, three, five years, or lifetime) are unchanged, as are the financial terms carried over from July: an 18% tax on adjusted gross receipts, a $50,000 operator license fee, and a $500,000 bond requirement.
Why it matters
None of this moves Maine any closer to an actual launch date, but the live-dealer sourcing change in particular could make it commercially easier for the Wabanaki tribes' eventual platform partner to offer live dealer games without building a dedicated in-state studio — see our explainer on how live dealer games work for the infrastructure that requirement is about. The comment period runs through October 30, and further revisions are possible before any rules are finalized.