US Gambling Affiliate Licence: State-by-State Guide (2026)

There is no federal gambling affiliate licence in the United States — and no state issues anything actually called an “affiliate licence” either. What exists is a patchwork of vendor registrations and supplier licences, and the single variable that decides which one you need is how you are paid. CPA and flat-fee deals put you in the cheap-registration tier almost everywhere. Revenue share puts you in the full-licence tier — background checks, fingerprints, investigation deposits — in every state that regulates affiliates at all. Two states ban rev-share compensation outright (Illinois and Missouri), and a growing group requires nothing whatsoever (Ohio, North Carolina, New York, Iowa, Wyoming, Nevada, DC). This guide maps all of it, state by state, as of July 2026.

The rule that decides everything: how you’re paid

US states don’t regulate affiliates as a category. They regulate vendors and suppliers to licensed operators, and they slot affiliates into those buckets based on the compensation clause in the operator agreement. Three regulators have said this plainly, in primary sources:

• Michigan. The MGCB’s internet gaming FAQ: an affiliate paid under a revenue-share agreement needs a supplier licence; a non-rev-share affiliate needs only a vendor registration.
• Colorado. Rule 3.1(1)(a)(iv) of the sports betting rules (1 CCR 207-2): anyone compensated with a percentage of gaming revenue is a Vendor Major; everyone else providing services is a Vendor Minor.
• Tennessee. Rule 1350-01-.02(82) defines “vendor” so that it captures rev-share affiliates — and expressly excludes CPA affiliates from the definition.

The logic is consistent: a rev-share affiliate holds a continuing economic stake in gaming revenue, so the state vets it the way it vets a B2B gaming supplier — corporate probity, key-person checks, sometimes fingerprints. A CPA affiliate is just a marketing invoice, so it gets a light registration or nothing at all.

The practical consequence is blunt: the same website, with the same traffic, can owe $0 or $150,000 depending on how its operator contracts are worded. Before you budget for any state, read your compensation clauses — that is the filing determinant, not your content.

The state-by-state table (2026)

Fees below are application/initial fees unless noted. Asterisked figures carry verification caveats explained under the table.

Caveats worth stating out loud: Michigan’s $200 vendor-registration fee is weakly verified — we have only traced it to an older rule version, so treat it as indicative. Arizona’s commonly cited $1,500/$500 fees come from secondary sources only; confirm with the ADG before budgeting. Kansas requires registration under K.A.R. 112-202-5, but we have found no reliably published fee or tier structure. And the no-requirement status of Wyoming, Nevada and DC rests on a single source each — solid enough to plan around, not solid enough to skip a confirmation call.

The five states worth reading closely

New Jersey

The cleanest two-tier example. A CPA or flat-fee affiliate files a Vendor Registration through its operator — no fee. A rev-share, per-deposit or hybrid affiliate needs the Ancillary Casino Service Industry Enterprise (CSIE) licence at a $2,000 filing fee. New Jersey is also the most paperwork-heavy state after approval: affiliates submit monthly compensation reports to the DGE, and the regime reaches sub-affiliates too — more on both below.

Pennsylvania

The PGCB runs a Gaming Service Provider (GSP) scheme with two tiers: Registration at $2,500 (plus deposits of $500/$60/$60) and Certification at $5,000 (deposits of $2,500, plus $1,000 per key person and $500 per affiliated entity, with fingerprints). One unresolved wrinkle: the Board’s FAQ describes a four-year term while the published fee schedule prices a five-year term. The conflict hasn’t been reconciled in the sources we rely on — we plan around the fee schedule’s five years, but flag it in every scoping.

Michigan

Rev-share affiliates take the full supplier licence: $2,500 application, $5,000 initial licence fee, $2,500 annual renewal — and an investigation that runs seven to nine months, the longest lead time on this map. If Michigan matters to your rev-share business, it is the state you file first purely on timeline. Registered vendors also sign a certification that they don’t promote illegal gambling sites to Michigan players — a real diligence point if you also run traffic to offshore brands elsewhere.

Colorado

Vendor Minor costs $350; Vendor Major costs $1,200 plus a $10,000 investigation deposit, drawn down by investigators at $77 an hour, on a two-year term. The deposit is the real cost driver: a clean corporate structure burns less of it, a complicated one can burn through all of it.

Tennessee

The outlier. CPA affiliates are expressly outside the vendor definition and file nothing. Rev-share affiliates face a $150,000 first three-year vendor term (paid as three $50,000 instalments), with renewals at $30,000 per three years — fees effective 30 June 2025. Felony or gambling convictions disqualify applicants. The rules contain no carve-out for small affiliates, and we have found no published exemption — so unless your Tennessee rev-share earnings clear the fee with room to spare, the rational move is to renegotiate that state onto CPA terms instead.

Illinois and Missouri: the banned tier

Two states solved affiliate licensing by removing the thing that triggers it. Illinois prohibits rev-share marketing compensation under 86 Ill. Adm. Code 3000.680(f), recodified for sports wagering on 17 July 2025. Missouri launched its market on 1 December 2025 with the same model built in from day one — 11 CSR 45-20.570(12). Neither state licenses affiliates at all; CPA and flat-fee deals are fine in both.

The compliance burden here lands on contract drafting, not applications. If a national operator agreement pays you rev-share “on all states”, it is mis-drafted for Illinois and Missouri — the carve-out has to be explicit, and serious operators will insist on it.

Where you file nothing

Ohio is the most explicit no-requirement state: OAC 3775-16-08 says affiliate marketers are not licensed, even on revenue share — but Ohio also shows what “nothing” really means, because the regulator enforces through operators (including a $150,000 fine connected to a media/affiliate operation). North Carolina launched in March 2024 with no affiliate licensing, and even struck a draft performance-compensation ban before adoption. New York requires no affiliate licence, though operators file affiliate lists with the regulator. Iowa, Wyoming, Nevada and DC require nothing — with the single-source caveat on the last three. Connecticut technically holds a dormant discretion to pull affiliates into a $2,000 Online Gaming Service Provider registration, but hasn’t exercised it as a general requirement. Vermont launched in January 2024 with no affiliate category at all.

The rule of thumb: in no-requirement states your obligations live in your operator contracts, because the operator answers to the regulator for everything you publish.

What changed in 2024–2026

This is a moving map, which is exactly why it needs a dated guide:

1. Indiana stopped enforcing affiliate registration on 1 July 2025. The $500 registration still exists on paper, but the IGC ceased enforcement under Governor Braun’s deregulation executive orders 17 and 18. Verify current status on the IGC’s site before relying on it.
2. Tennessee’s new fees took effect 30 June 2025 — $150,000 first term, $30,000 renewals, making it the most expensive affiliate market in the country by an order of magnitude.
3. Missouri launched 1 December 2025 as a CPA-only market, rev-share banned from the first day.
4. North Carolina (March 2024) and Vermont (January 2024) launched without affiliate licensing — the newer the market, the lighter the affiliate regime tends to be.
5. Massachusetts waived its affiliate-compensation bar in March 2023 (a 5–0 commission vote): both CPA and rev-share are allowed under the $5,000 Sports Wagering Registrant tier, though the MGC has signalled rev-share may later require a full vendor licence.

Net direction: deregulation, with Tennessee as the loud exception. Anything you filed or skipped before mid-2025 deserves a fresh look.

The fine print that catches people

• Sub-affiliates count. New Jersey’s regime explicitly covers sub-affiliates, so a network model doesn’t insulate the people below you — the registration and reporting obligations follow the money.
• Monthly compensation reports. New Jersey requires affiliates to report compensation to the DGE monthly. Build it into operations; it is the obligation most often missed after a smooth application.
• Certification about illegal sites. Michigan vendors certify they don’t promote unlicensed gambling to Michigan players. If your portfolio spans regulated US brands and offshore brands, you need geo-segregation you can evidence.
• Thresholds can spare you. Louisiana’s $250/yr permit only bites above $500,000 in annual receipts from licensees; Maryland’s $100 registration applies once you supply $50,000 a year or more (its rev-share certification tier is unconfirmed). Below the lines, you file nothing.
• West Virginia’s split is functional, not financial. Pure click-steering earns the $100-per-gaming-type Registrant tier; anything more involved, including rev-share, moves you to the $1,000/yr supplier licence.

How to sequence your filings

The mistake we see most is geographic completionism — trying to register everywhere before earning anywhere. The regulators themselves tie obligations to compensated relationships, so match the filings to where your revenue actually is:

1. Pull revenue by state for the trailing twelve months, and classify each operator deal as CPA or rev-share.
2. File where rev-share meets a licensing state, in revenue order: New Jersey and Michigan first (Michigan first chronologically — the 7–9-month investigation sets your critical path), then Pennsylvania, Colorado, Massachusetts.
3. Treat Tennessee as a standalone business case. $150,000 against your actual Tennessee rev-share earnings; if it doesn’t clear, switch that state to CPA.
4. Fix Illinois and Missouri in the contracts, not in filings — explicit CPA-only carve-outs.
5. Leave the nothing-required states alone, but keep the operator-liability rules in view, because your operators will police your creatives there.
6. Re-check the map every renewal cycle. Indiana’s July 2025 about-face is proof that last year’s table is not this year’s.

For the global picture beyond the US — where affiliate licences genuinely exist, from Romania’s ONJN Class 2 to Greece’s HGC register — start with our country-by-country guide on whether gambling affiliates need a licence, and the fee data behind both articles lives in our affiliate licensing index.

This mapping and filing work is what Vantegris does daily: we classify your operator agreements, tell you which states you actually owe, and prepare the vendor registrations and supplier applications end to end — see the US affiliate licensing service page for scope and fees, or the wider gambling affiliate licence practice if your traffic is international. If you’d rather start with a list of your operators and states, send it over and we’ll return the filing map.

Bottom line

There is no US affiliate licence — there are fifteen-odd state regimes keyed to one question: are you paid a share of gaming revenue? If yes, budget for real licensing in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado and (expensively) Tennessee. If no, most of the map is a cheap registration or an empty checklist. And in Illinois and Missouri the answer must be no, because rev-share compensation is banned. Read the contracts first; the filings follow.

This article is general information, not legal advice. State fees and rules change frequently — several figures above carry verification caveats noted in the text — and we confirm the current position for your specific operator agreements and states at scoping.

This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional before acting.