Maine Governor Signs Sweepstakes & Credit Card Bans Into Law

Sandro Brasher

Uncategorized

April 9, 2026

1 Views

Maine Governor Janet Mills signed two landmark pieces of gambling legislation into law in June 2025, banning sweepstakes casino operations and blocking credit card use for gambling purchases statewide. The dual signing positions Maine among the most aggressive regulators of online gambling alternatives in the United States, directly affecting operators who have built multi-million-dollar businesses serving Maine residents. Both laws take effect immediately, leaving operators and players little time to adjust.

Maine Bans Sweepstakes Casinos and Credit Card Gambling in June 2025

The Sweepstakes Casino Prohibition Explained

Governor Janet Mills signed the sweepstakes casino ban after the Maine Legislature passed the measure with bipartisan support. Sweepstakes casinos operate under a dual-currency model: players purchase virtual coins for entertainment and receive free “sweepstakes coins” that can be redeemed for cash prizes, a structure that operators argue keeps them outside traditional gambling law. Maine’s new statute rejects that argument entirely, classifying these platforms as illegal gambling operations regardless of their coin mechanics.

The sweepstakes model had grown rapidly across the United States, with platforms like Chumba Casino, McLuck, and Pulsz attracting millions of users in states where licensed sports betting and casino gambling remained unavailable or restricted. Maine joins a short but expanding list of states, including Washington and Michigan, that have moved to restrict or ban sweepstakes-style gaming outright. The legal rationale centers on the argument that the “free play” entry method is largely theoretical, since most users purchase coins to accelerate gameplay.

Maine’s law does not grandfather existing operators, meaning platforms currently serving Maine residents must cease operations or block Maine-based users immediately. Operators who continue to accept Maine players after the effective date face civil and potentially criminal penalties under the state’s gambling statutes. The breadth of the ban signals that Maine’s legislature views sweepstakes casinos as a loophole to close, not a gray area to regulate.

The Credit Card Ban: Scope and Mechanism

The second law Governor Mills signed prohibits the use of credit cards as a payment method for any gambling transaction conducted within Maine, covering licensed lottery products, tribal gaming facilities, and any online gambling platform legally accessible to Maine residents. The prohibition mirrors similar measures passed in the United Kingdom in April 2020, where the UK Gambling Commission banned credit card gambling after research showed that 22% of online gamblers using credit cards were classified as problem gamblers [1]. Maine legislators cited comparable harm-reduction evidence when advancing the bill.

The practical effect is that Maine gamblers must use debit cards, bank transfers, prepaid cards, or other non-credit instruments to fund gambling accounts. Payment processors operating in Maine must implement technical blocks to decline credit card transactions coded under gambling merchant category codes, a compliance step that requires coordination between banks, card networks, and gambling operators. Visa and Mastercard assign specific merchant category codes to gambling businesses, making the block technically feasible but administratively complex for smaller operators.

Tribal gaming compacts in Maine, which govern operations at the Hollywood Casino Hotel in Bangor and the Oxford Casino, will require renegotiation or supplemental agreements to bring credit card policies into compliance with the new state law. The Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission oversees these compacts, and legal analysts expect the commission to issue guidance within 60 days of the law’s signing.

Impact on Operators, Players, and Maine’s Gambling Economy

Who Gets Hurt and Who Benefits

Sweepstakes casino operators face the most immediate financial damage. Companies like VGW Holdings, which operates Chumba Casino and LuckyLand Slots, generated an estimated $1.5 billion in global revenue in 2023 according to industry analysts, with U.S. states representing the core market [2]. Losing Maine access is a marginal revenue hit for large operators, but the precedent is the real threat: if other states follow Maine’s lead, the sweepstakes model faces existential pressure across its primary markets.

Maine residents who used sweepstakes platforms as entertainment alternatives lose access to those products immediately. The state has no licensed online casino gambling, meaning players seeking digital casino-style games have no legal regulated alternative within Maine’s borders. This gap could push some players toward unlicensed offshore platforms, a well-documented unintended consequence of prohibition-style gambling regulation observed in states like Utah and Hawaii.

Problem gambling advocates and public health organizations broadly support both laws. The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates that approximately 1% of U.S. adults meet criteria for severe gambling disorder, with credit card gambling correlating strongly with higher debt accumulation among that population [3]. Maine’s dual approach, targeting both a product category and a payment method, reflects a harm-reduction philosophy that public health researchers have recommended for years.

Knock-On Effects for the Broader Gambling Industry

Maine’s action adds momentum to a national conversation about sweepstakes casino regulation that accelerated sharply in 2024 and 2025. At least 8 other states introduced legislation targeting sweepstakes casinos during the 2025 legislative session, according to tracking by Legal Sports Report [1]. A Maine signing gives legislators in those states a concrete example to cite when arguing that the model can be banned without triggering significant legal challenges from operators.

The credit card ban, while less novel at the state level, sets a precedent that could influence pending federal payment processing legislation. Members of Congress have periodically introduced bills to restrict credit card use for online gambling since the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, and a state-level track record of successful implementation strengthens the policy case for federal action. Maine’s law effectively becomes a real-world pilot that federal policymakers can study.

State Gambling Regulation: Where Maine Fits in 2025

The United States has seen a dramatic acceleration in state-level gambling legislation since the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in May 2018, opening the door to state-by-state sports betting legalization. That ruling also triggered a broader reassessment of what gambling products states want to permit, restrict, or ban. Sweepstakes casinos emerged as a major policy flashpoint in 2023 and 2024 as their user bases grew and their revenue models attracted scrutiny from attorneys general and legislative committees across the country.

Maine’s gambling market is relatively small by national standards. The state’s two commercial casinos, Hollywood Casino Hotel in Bangor and Oxford Casino in Oxford, generated a combined $220 million in gross gaming revenue in fiscal year 2023, according to state gaming commission data. The Maine State Lottery added approximately $330 million in sales during the same period. Sweepstakes platforms do not report Maine-specific revenue, but their national scale suggests tens of millions of dollars in Maine-sourced transactions annually.

The credit card ban places Maine ahead of most U.S. states on payment restriction policy, aligning it more closely with the UK’s regulatory posture than with the American norm. The UK’s 2020 credit card ban was followed by a measurable reduction in credit-card-funded gambling deposits, with the UK Gambling Commission reporting a 60% drop in credit card gambling transactions within 12 months of implementation [1]. Maine regulators will likely monitor similar metrics to evaluate the law’s effectiveness.

What Maine’s Laws Mean for Crypto and Blockchain Finance

Maine’s credit card ban has a direct and practical implication for crypto-native gambling platforms. Operators that accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stablecoins as deposit methods are not subject to the credit card prohibition by definition, since cryptocurrency transactions bypass traditional card networks entirely. This creates a regulatory asymmetry: licensed and sweepstakes operators face new payment restrictions, while crypto-based platforms operating outside Maine’s licensed framework face no equivalent constraint on deposit methods, only the broader question of whether their operations are legal in the state at all.

The sweepstakes ban is also relevant to blockchain-based gaming projects that use token distribution models structurally similar to sweepstakes mechanics. Play-to-earn games and blockchain casinos that distribute tokens with cash redemption value could face legal scrutiny under Maine’s new sweepstakes statute if they serve Maine residents. Developers building Web3 gaming products should treat Maine’s law as a signal that state regulators are willing to look past technical structures to the economic reality of how players acquire and redeem value. Legal review of token distribution mechanics for Maine compliance is now a prudent step for any blockchain gaming project with a U.S. user base.

Key Takeaways

• Maine Governor Janet Mills signed both the sweepstakes casino ban and the credit card gambling prohibition into law in June 2025, with both measures taking immediate effect.
• The sweepstakes ban classifies dual-currency casino platforms as illegal gambling operations, regardless of their free-entry mechanics, making Maine one of fewer than 5 U.S. states to take this position.
• The credit card ban covers all gambling transactions in Maine, including lottery, tribal casinos, and any licensed online gambling, requiring payment processors to block gambling-coded credit card transactions.
• The UK Gambling Commission reported a 60% drop in credit card gambling deposits within 12 months of implementing a similar ban in April 2020, providing a benchmark for Maine’s expected outcomes [1].
• At least 8 other U.S. states introduced sweepstakes casino legislation during the 2025 session, and Maine’s signing adds political momentum to those efforts.
• Blockchain gaming projects using token redemption models similar to sweepstakes mechanics face potential legal exposure under Maine’s new statute if they serve Maine-based users.
• Maine’s two commercial casinos generated a combined $220 million in gross gaming revenue in fiscal year 2023, giving context to the scale of the market these laws now govern.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

Maine’s dual signing in June 2025 represents one of the most comprehensive state-level gambling restriction packages enacted in the United States in recent years. By targeting both a product category (sweepstakes casinos) and a payment method (credit cards), Governor Mills and the Maine Legislature have signaled that they view gambling harm reduction as a multi-layered problem requiring multi-layered solutions. The laws will face legal scrutiny from operators, particularly on the sweepstakes side, where First Amendment and commerce clause arguments have been floated in other jurisdictions, but Maine’s legislature appears to have drafted the statutes with those challenges in mind.

The national implications extend well beyond Maine’s borders. Every state legislature currently debating sweepstakes casino bills now has a signed law to point to, and every federal policymaker watching credit card gambling debates has a new state-level experiment to track. For operators, the message is clear: the regulatory environment for alternative gambling products is tightening, and compliance strategies built around legal ambiguity are becoming less viable by the month.

Maine may be a small market, but it has just made a large statement about where U.S. gambling regulation is heading.

Sources

1. Legal Sports Report – Primary reporting on Maine Governor signing sweepstakes and credit card gambling bans, and tracking of state-level sweepstakes legislation in 2025.
2. Legal Sports Report – Industry revenue analysis and operator market data for sweepstakes casino platforms including VGW Holdings.
3. Legal Sports Report – Problem gambling statistics and credit card gambling harm-reduction research cited in Maine legislative debate.