Maryland

Maryland's gambling regulatory landscape this cycle is dominated by a contested enforcement campaign against unlicensed sports-event-contract operators, Kalshi, Crypto.com, Polymarket and Robinhood among them, and by a rise in the mobile sports-wagering tax rate to 20 percent. The Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency remains the sole licensing and enforcement authority for the licensed market, which supports twelve operators and generated record fiscal contributions of $1.637 billion in FY2026. Legislative attempts to expand Attorney General enforcement power over unlicensed operators and to ban dual-currency sweepstakes platforms both failed in the 2026 session but are expected to return in 2027, positioning the jurisdiction as tightening-intent with contested execution.

Maryland's sports-wagering licensing framework, administered by the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency, saw no rule changes this cycle. The agency's official licensee register, accessed in June 2026, confirms ten active mobile sports-wagering licensees, correcting a prior baseline figure of twelve; the revision is a factual reconciliation against the regulator's live register rather than a change to licensing conditions, applications or renewal standards. The boundary of what counts as a licensable sports wager in Maryland, however, remains contested through a parallel channel: in April 2025 the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Commission determined that Kalshi's event contracts are economically indistinguishable from sports wagers, a determination that functions as a regulator circular rather than primary legislation and is accordingly fragile as an instrument, though it has become the foundational legal predicate invoked in Baltimore's subsequent municipal litigation against Kalshi and Polymarket.

Standard US online sports wagering payment stack. Licensed Maryland operators accept ACH, debit cards, e-wallets and prepaid; mobile operators may accept credit cards to fund accounts (standard practice), while retail wagers must be cash, check or debit. MCC 7995 is functional for licensed operators. BSA/FinCEN AML obligations apply with SAR/CTR filing.

Effective July 1, 2026, electronic instant bingo machines operating in Anne Arundel and Calvert Counties are no longer required to print a paper ticket for each game of instant bingo played, unless the player specifically elects to have a ticket printed. The change is implemented through amendments to the technical standards under COMAR 36.07.01 and 36.07.03, with the machine-level requirement set out in Technical Standards COMAR 36.07.06.08, and reflects changes flowing from Criminal Law Article 12-308. This is a narrow, single-product adjustment to the technical-standards layer of Maryland's gambling regulatory framework: it applies only to electronic instant bingo terminals in the two named counties and leaves the certification, approval and technical-standards architecture for every other regulated product class unchanged. The amendment reduces an operational compliance burden for instant-bingo terminal operators rather than introducing a new certification requirement, and it does not touch the licensing framework, the classification of instant bingo as a regulated activity, or any cross-product technical standard applicable to casino gaming, sports wagering, or the video lottery terminal network.

Robinhood and Webull's role distributing Kalshi's event-contract products to Maryland residents, and Coinbase's role providing crypto on-ramp access to the same products, are now directly at issue in Baltimore's August 2026 municipal lawsuit. All three are named not as originators of the contested contracts but as distribution and funding-access co-defendants under the city's Consumer Protection Ordinance, extending accessory-liability theory to platforms that did not themselves create the disputed product. This tests a previously unadjudicated theory in Maryland: that a brokerage app, retail trading platform, or crypto exchange distributing or funding access to a product a state regulator has determined is indistinguishable from a sports wager can be held liable alongside the originating platform. The relief sought, injunction, disgorgement, restitution and civil penalties, would apply to these distribution partners as well as to Kalshi and Polymarket directly.

The Maryland Board of Contract Appeals sanctioned the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency on 28 September 2026 for repeatedly obstructing discovery in the ongoing dispute over the state lottery-operations contract between Scientific Games and Intralot. The Board's sanctions order found that the agency threw up roadblocks to the appellant's right to discovery at every step, and contemporaneous reporting described the agency as sanctioned for repeatedly ignoring orders for records. This is a procedural sanction issued by an administrative appeals tribunal against the regulator in its capacity as a litigant, not an enforcement action against a licensee and not a change to the underlying gambling statute or licensing conditions. The litigation concerns the state's lottery-operations contract, which is reported to expire in May and likely to require extension while the rebid procurement remains contested before the Board. The sanction elevates procedural and vendor-continuity risk around that procurement without altering any licensing or activity-class instrument. No MLGCA enforcement log or regulator bulletin was independently accessed to corroborate the matter beyond press coverage, and the sanction should be read as a litigation-conduct finding rather than a substantive licensing determination.