Nevada charges $500 for issuance or renewal of some system operator licences. Malta charges €5,000 just to apply for a remote gaming licence.
We revise a page when the statute, filing or report behind it changes: if the source is not in front of us, the figure does not go up.
What is on this page
Neither number tells you what a gambling licence actually costs, because the posted fee is only the first of several recurring charges.
The Core Numbers: Nevada, Malta, Britain
Nevada's nonrestricted gaming fee schedule from the Nevada Gaming Control Board includes a quarterly slot-machine fee of $20 per machine and an annual tax of $250 per machine. The annual fee for games and tables sits separately in the same state schedule. System operators pay $500 for the issuance or renewal of a licence, and the licence runs by calendar year, expiring on December 31. Nevada slot-machine route and inter-casino linked system operators also pay a $500 annual fee, charged on or before December 31 for the ensuing calendar year.
Malta's remote gaming licence application fee is €5,000. The fixed annual licence fee for B2B providers supplying solely Type 4 gaming supplies is €10,000. Great Britain's Gambling Commission publishes licence fees and annual fees by annual gross gambling yield bands for operating licences. A non-remote general betting standard operating licence in the lowest band shown carries an application fee of £2,178.
Renewal, Terms and the 5% Tax
Nevada's $500 system operator licence expires every December 31, a hard calendar-year reset. Malta's annual licence fee is paid before issuance and then annually in advance, and the MGA's guidance says yearly licence fees are non-refundable and paid upfront. The gaming tax for services offered to players physically present in Malta is 5% of gaming revenue.
Britain adds a second layer: the Gambling Commission lists a prescribed licence application fee for a personal management licence at £185, with an ongoing fee of £370 every five years. That five-year renewal is separate from the operator licence and separate from the annual fee bands that track gross gambling yield.
What the Posted Fee Hides
The UK Gambling Commission says its work is funded by fees set by DCMS and paid by gambling businesses and the individuals it licences. That means the £2,178 application fee is one entry in a system that also charges revenue-based annual fees, five-year personal management fees, and separate fees for the people who run the company.
Paying €10,000 up front for a Type 4 B2B supplier does not create a credit against tax or a refund if the operation shrinks. The official schedules used in this comparison do not provide one clean figure for suitability investigations, key-person applications, vendor licensing, or accredited test-house certification. The operator has to assemble those costs from separate regulator documents, and in some jurisdictions those documents are not published in a single comparable form.
Jurisdiction by Jurisdiction
- Nevada: $500 system operator licence, calendar-year expiry December 31; nonrestricted slots at $20 per machine per quarter and $250 per machine per year.
- Malta: €5,000 remote application; €10,000 fixed annual for Type 4 B2B providers; annual fee in advance and non-refundable; 5% tax on Maltese player revenue.
- Great Britain: £2,178 application for a non-remote general betting standard operating licence in the lowest GGY band; annual fees by GGY band; £185 PML application and £370 every five years.
No single official document used here gives a direct bond or segregated player-funds reserve requirement in the same comparable form across these three jurisdictions.
Missing Comparators
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan and the smaller Caribbean jurisdictions are not in this comparison. For those markets, no regulator document or statute could be verified with the same four columns: application fee, renewal fee, bond or reserve requirement, and licence term. Until those official schedules are published in comparable form, a global cost comparison would be invented, not reported.
The visible fee is only the opening number. The recurring burden sits in annual tax, five-year personnel fees, non-refundable advances and the unbilled cost of compliance. The next useful figure is the annual cost per licensed entity after renewal and tax. For New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan, that number remains unpublished in a single official schedule.