New Jersey ranked second behind the United Kingdom for responsible-gambling penalties relative to market revenue in CasinoReviews.net’s Regulator Strictness Index 2026, a comparison of enforcement published for Safer Gambling Week.
The index put New Jersey’s rate at $81 in responsible-gambling penalties for every $1 million of market revenue from November 2025 through October 2026. The UK Gambling Commission ranked first at £846 per £1 million of gambling yield, while Ontario iGaming was third at C$40, followed by Pennsylvania at $17 and Massachusetts at $3.66. Nevada and Ohio were tied last, with no responsible-gambling penalty published during the period.
CasinoReviews.net examined 89 published penalties issued by seven regulators in the UK, Canada and the United States. It said it checked each sanction against the relevant regulator’s decision document and adjusted the amounts for the revenue generated in each market, rather than ranking jurisdictions by absolute fine totals.
Self-exclusion was the dominant issue in New Jersey’s responsible-gambling cases. Ten of the state’s 11 penalties in the category involved breaches of self-exclusion rules. Caesars Sportsbook paid $296,715, including disgorged profits, and BetMGM paid $157,789, according to PlayNJ’s account of the index.
As covered in August, New Jersey’s action against Caesars Sportsbook concerned responsible-gaming messaging and self-exclusion policies, and included a civil fine and disgorgement order.
Nikoleta Kuncheva of CasinoReviews.net described self-exclusion as “the last safeguard a player sets for themselves.” She argued that sharply different sanction levels, and the absence of disclosed amounts in one state, make it difficult for players to assess how seriously regulators enforce that protection.
The report also produced a separate comparison for all penalty categories, which should not be read as a responsible-gambling-only ranking. New Jersey’s overall rate was $152 per $1 million of revenue, compared with £1,206 in the UK, C$193 in Ontario iGaming, $78 in Pennsylvania, $111 in Massachusetts, $209 in Ohio and $931 in Nevada.
Nevada’s overall figure was driven by $7.8 million in fines against Caesars Palace and $7.2 million against The Venetian over illegal bookmaker Mathew Bowyer. Ohio’s only published penalty was a $450,000 settlement with Bally’s Interactive over tax reporting. The largest UK case in the index was a £5.01 million payment by the Grosvenor casino group for social-responsibility and anti-money-laundering failures.
Michigan was excluded because its regulator does not publish the amounts of enforcement decisions. CasinoReviews.net said its full dataset, methodology and links to every regulator decision were available on request.
