Liberia Gaming Licence 2026: The NLA's Fee Schedule, the Register, and the Licences It Says It Never Issued

What the regulator said on 10 September 2026

The National Lottery Authority put three documents on its website on 10 September 2026: a press release, a one-page public notice numbered NLA/PN/2026/09.02, and a notice of default addressed to Seven Blue Ltd, a Delaware company it had contracted under an Online Gaming Licensing Service Agreement. The public notice is short enough to read in full. Its operative lines:

“The National Lottery Authority is the only statutory body in Liberia that may license games of chance, including online and international operations. There is no ‘Liberia Online Gaming and Casino Commission.’ That name is not a government body.”

“Every so-called license issued or sold by a contractor, consultant, law firm or reseller as a Liberia gaming license is not an NLA license unless the Authority itself has issued it and can confirm it in writing. Holders may apply to the NLA for reissue. Reissue is not automatic.”

“Do not pay a ‘turnkey €50,000’ quotation as if it were the official tariff. Only the NLA sets the fee.”

The press release adds the Director General’s own words: “A contractor may build a platform. A contractor may not become the State.” It names the one account that may receive licence fees, a USD current account at Guaranty Trust Bank (Liberia) Limited, and says payment to any other account “is not payment to the Republic”.

The notice of default lists what the Authority says Seven Blue did: issued and sold purported licences in its own name and in the name of the Commission; collected fees through private accounts rather than the NLA’s transitory account; presented itself as the regulator; kept no proper records; and had no operational presence in Monrovia. Seven Blue was given 48 hours to acknowledge in writing that only the NLA issues licences, to stop using the NLA’s name, seal and flag, to hand over an inventory of every licence it claimed to have issued and every reseller it appointed, and to direct licensees to pay outstanding fees to the NLA. A separate 60-day contractual cure period runs alongside; counted from 10 September it ends on 9 November 2026.

How the parties got here, from the documents we could open:

Date	Event	Source
4 Nov 2025	A PR Newswire release announces the “world’s first International Integrated Gaming License” under the NLA, bundling a bank account, an AML officer and a business address. It names no issuing company, no fee and no legal basis	PR Newswire
spring 2026	NLA signs an Online Gaming Licensing Service Agreement with Seven Blue. The NLA’s September notice dates the breaches to that agreement; Focus Gaming News reported a signing on 2 April and a formal presentation at the Board chairman’s office on 11 May 2026, described as a digital licensing and compliance platform	NLA notice; Focus Gaming News, 13 May 2026
29 Apr 2026	NLA Board adopts Resolution 005 of 2026 with a revised fee schedule, capital floors and a Good-Cause Levy	Resolution 005
8 Aug 2026	NLA announces the revised fee schedule on its website	NLA news page
10 Sep 2026	Notice of default, public notice and press release	NLA
9 Nov 2026	End of the 60-day cure period, if counted from 10 September	computed

Trade press has reported that the Commission, in a LinkedIn statement, says it holds government approvals and has taken the matter to the Office of the President. We could not open that report and found no instrument behind the claim; we record it as the Commission’s position, not as a fact about Liberian law. The NLA’s position is in the three documents above.

The fee schedule the NLA actually publishes

Resolution 005 of 2026 is a 23-page instrument adopted by the NLA Board on 29 April 2026. Article 1.3 makes it effective on adoption and publication in the Official Gazette; the Gazette date is not on the NLA website, so every “180 days from the effective date” below is counted from adoption. Appendix III-A replaces the 2024 schedule “in its entirety”. All amounts are in US dollars and, under the 8 August announcement, must be paid in US dollars.

Item (Appendix III-A)	2024 schedule	2026 schedule
Application fee for a licence, non-refundable	400	500
Late renewal fee (working day after due date, up to 30 days; then enforcement or closure)	500	1,500
Casino, Montserrado County, 1 to 25 machines	100,000	110,000
Casino, other counties, 1 to 25 machines	—	50,000 per county
Online casino / slot	not a class	80,000
Sports betting, online	90,000	90,000
Sports betting, physical, Montserrado “mother licence”	90,000	90,000
Sports betting, physical, each additional county (7% of the mother fee)	—	6,300
Scratch and win, physical	50,000	80,000
Scratch and win, digital or online (partnership agreement required)	—	80,000
Slot machine licence, 1 to 30 machines	40,000	50,000
Mini slot (“Chinese machines”), 1 to 50	15,000	30,000
Prediction market operator licence	not a class	80,000
Advertising permit, annual	—	500
Gaming-machine import consent, annual	—	5,000
Minimum penalty for a breach of the Resolution or Regulations	3,000	5,000

The sports-betting fee has risen from USD 40,000 in the 2016 schedule to USD 80,000 in 2021 and USD 90,000 in 2024, where it stays: 2.25 times the 2016 figure. The Montserrado casino fee went from USD 60,000 to 100,000 to 110,000. The 2026 changes are elsewhere: the online casino class, the prediction-market class, a doubled mini-slot fee and a late fee three times its old size.

Three rules travel with the numbers. Article 5.2: every annual licence fee is paid in full before the licence is issued or renewed, instalments and partial payments are not permitted, and a partial payment “does not issue, renew, extend, or validate a license”. Article 5.3: application fees, permit fees, late fees and machine fees are separate from licence fees. Schedule A, regulation 3: there is “no separate sportsbook class”; physical and online sportsbooks sit under the sports-betting licences.

The levy with a floor

Part III adds a Good-Cause Levy. Article 5.8 sets it at up to 1% of gross gaming revenue, at a rate the Board determines, “not less than USD 25,000 and shall not exceed USD 100,000” per licensed operator per year, remitted monthly on the fifth working day (art. 5.9), assessed on GGR and “not on player deposits, stakes, wagers, winnings”. GGR is wagers accepted less prizes paid, before costs or taxes (art. 2).

The instrument then reads two ways. Article 5.9 says that once an operator has paid the USD 100,000 maximum “no separate or additional Good-Cause contribution shall be payable”. Article 5.10, headed aggregation, says the amounts under 5.8 and 5.9 “combined shall therefore be not less than USD50,000, and shall therefore not exceed USD200,000 per financial year”, and Appendix III-A lists the levy twice, as item 22 (art. 5.8) and item 23 (art. 5.9), each with its own USD 25,000 to 100,000 band. We show both readings and do not pick one; the Board has not published the rate it has set.

At 1%, the USD 25,000 floor binds up to USD 2.5m of GGR and the USD 100,000 ceiling binds from USD 10m. What the fixed charges come to as a share of revenue, on the single-levy reading, for one online casino licence:

Annual GGR (USD)	Licence fee + application	Levy at 1% within the band	Total	Share of GGR
500,000	80,500	25,000	105,500	21.1%
1,000,000	80,500	25,000	105,500	10.6%
2,500,000	80,500	25,000	105,500	4.2%
5,000,000	80,500	50,000	130,500	2.6%
10,000,000	80,500	100,000	180,500	1.8%

On the article 5.10 reading, add USD 25,000 at each row up to USD 5m of GGR and USD 100,000 at the last. Fees for connection to the Central Lottery Management System (art. 5.6) come on top once the Board declares the system operational; the Resolution says they will be stated separately and sized to the integration required, with no per-terminal charge where devices report through one central integration.

Capital floors, and when they bit

Appendix III-B sets minimum paid-up capital “required at grant and to be maintained throughout the licence”: USD 1,000,000 for a Montserrado casino, 750,000 for a casino elsewhere, 500,000 for an online casino, 500,000 for sports betting (physical or online), 500,000 for a prediction-market operator, 250,000 for scratch and win, 200,000 for a slot licence and 100,000 for mini slots. Capital must be unencumbered, “not funded by player deposits or unpaid prizes”, and evidenced by audited statements and a bank confirmation not older than 30 days (art. 28.2; Schedule A reg. 6.1). A shortfall above 10% uncured for 30 days is a suspension ground; above 25% uncured for 60 days, a revocation ground (art. 28.3).

Article 28.5 stacks the classes: the highest floor plus 25% of each additional class floor, unless the Board waives the increment for “a single integrated operation”. An operator holding online casino and sports betting therefore needs USD 625,000; adding a prediction-market licence takes it to USD 750,000. Existing licensees had 180 days from the effective date to comply (art. 28.4). Counted from adoption on 29 April, that period ended on 26 October 2026, the day before we read the list; whether the Board extended it is not published.

What a first year costs

Adding the schedule up for an operator that wants both online classes, before CLMS fees, the advertising permit and any county operations:

Component	Online casino only	Online casino + online sports betting
Application fees (USD 500 per licence)	500	1,000
Licence fees, year one	80,000	170,000
Good-Cause Levy floor, single-levy reading	25,000	25,000
Year-one minimum, single levy	105,500	196,000
Levy floor on the art. 5.10 reading	50,000	50,000
Year-one minimum, art. 5.10	130,500	221,000
Paid-up capital to hold (not spent)	500,000	625,000

For scale, the one-year offshore licences this index tracks cost EUR 17,828 in Anjouan, EUR 28,000 in Nevis and EUR 47,450 a year for a Curaçao B2C licence. Liberia’s online casino fee alone is USD 80,000; it is priced as a domestic licence, with a domestic company and office behind it.

What the register shows

The NLA publishes a Licensed Operators page: one table of institution, category, date issued and expiry. We counted it on 27 October 2026 with a script that reads every table row.

Category	Rows
Sports betting	13 (one row labelled “ONLINE”: ML Entertainment, Nice Bet)
Casino	7
Slot	8
Mini slot	7
Scratch and win	1
Online casino	2
Total	38 rows, 35 distinct names

The two online casino rows are Good Game Limited (ChopWin), issued 26 May 2026, and SH Interactive (21.COM), issued 27 May 2026: four weeks after the Board created the class. Nothing on the list is described as international, integrated or offshore.

Fourteen of the 38 rows show an expiry date that has already passed, from a casino licence dated to 9 March 2026 to a sports-betting licence that expired on 24 September. One row, Winner’s Incorporated’s sports-betting licence, carries the same date, 3 November 2025, as both issue and expiry. One row, Denzon (BETGETGO), has no dates. LIPAY Inc. appears with a licence expiring 8 May 2026; the new one-year licence the NLA is reported to have issued it on 22 September 2026 is not on the page. Read the list as the NLA’s publication of record, not as a live register: a row past its expiry may be renewed and not yet updated, or expired and not yet removed, and the page does not say which. The “Unlicensed Operators” page next to it is a table with headers and no rows.

The counts sit beside the other public registers we track on the registers page.

What the Act and the Regulations require

The National Lottery Authority Act, approved on 22 December 2014, repealed the 1993 Liberia National Lotteries Corporation Act and made the operation of “a national lottery or any lottery, by whatever name called” subject to an NLA licence (s. 23). The Act’s definition of lottery covers “games of chance such as raffle draw, casino, slot” and the rest of the sector. The Authority may grant a licence to a person or body corporate that is fit and proper, has the knowledge and experience to run the business, can show it is “capable of mobilizing sufficient financial resources”, and undertakes to run it “corruption free” (s. 25.1).

The provisions an applicant plans around:

• Term. One year from the date of grant (s. 26.1), renewable annually (s. 27.1). Regulation 001 repeats the one-year term for each class (s. 6.7 for sports betting) and requires the renewal application 45 days before expiry; a late application pays the late fee and may be fined for operating unlicensed if the decision is not out in time (s. 6.10). If the Authority cannot decide in time, it issues a provisional licence of up to 90 days.
• Transfer. A licence is non-transferable (s. 28.1). A transfer costs a Board-set fine of not less than USD 2,500 plus revocation (s. 28.2). Regulation 001 s. 6.9 extends this to “any purported transfer” and requires NLA approval for any sale of a sports-betting business.
• Revocation. Grounds in s. 29.1 run from loss of fit-and-proper status to breach of licence conditions and failure to prevent fraud; the licensee gets 14 days to show cause (s. 29.2). Regulation 003 of 2021 added a non-performing ground: a licence not operated “within the first quarter (three months)” of issue “shall be revoked with immediate effect”.
• Eligibility. A sports-betting applicant must be authorised to do business in Liberia, shown by business registration, a Liberia Revenue Authority tax clearance and a verifiable office (Reg. 001 s. 6.1.1). It must show an investment portfolio of at least USD 750,000 (USD 1,000,000 for a casino, 500,000 for scratch and win, 250,000 for a gaming-machine licence) and keep a bank balance of at least 25% of that portfolio, evidenced by the latest monthly statement at application and by twelve monthly statements at renewal. The 2026 sports-betting checklist adds GLI-19 certification of the betting platform, ISO 27001 for technical partners, a presentation before the NLA, and “at least 15 working days” of due diligence. The Authority reviews a complete file within 30 days (s. 6.5); its December 2024 service charter promises licence processing in “14 working days at most”.
• Penalties. A breach of the Act with no specific penalty carries a fine of not less than USD 2,500 or imprisonment of not less than one year, or both (s. 40.1); Regulation 001 s. 14 sets USD 2,500 per violation, and Resolution 005 raises the minimum administrative penalty under its own rules to USD 5,000.
• Who may not hold one. Anyone in political office or at policy-making level in the public service (s. 30.1).

One thing the statute does not contain is the word online. We searched the Act, Regulation 001, Regulation 002 and Regulation 003 for “online”, “internet”, “remote” and “website”: the only hit is a rule on publishing raffle winners on a website. Online play entered the framework through the fee schedules. Regulation 004 of 2024 listed “Gaming License (Sports Betting)-Online” at USD 90,000 for the first time and described itself as covering “Online Slot, Online Casino, and Other Lotto games either online or paper based”; Resolution 005 created the online casino class. The licence an online operator holds is a licence for a game of chance under section 25 of the Act, priced by Board resolution. Resolution 005’s scope clause speaks of “cross-border gaming products”, and the public notice claims authority over “online and international operations”, but no instrument we read defines an international licence, sets a fee for one, or exempts a holder from the local registration, office and tax-clearance conditions in Regulation 001.

Enforcement: the LIPAY ruling

The one contested case on the NLA’s site is NLA v. The Management of LIPAY Inc. and The Management of 1XBET, decided by a Hearing Officer on 22 June 2026.

The facts found: LIPAY held a sports-betting licence. On 13 May 2025 it signed a trademark licence with DIDIANE LTD, a Cyprus company, for the right to use the 1XBET marks in Liberia at a royalty of USD 5,000 a month. Billboards at seven Monrovia locations carried the 1XBET brand with what the investigators called a “reference link” to LIPAY. The NLA’s ICT director testified that the platform resolved to 1xBet’s global infrastructure, that mobile-money payments through Orange and MTN went to a 1XBET wallet rather than LIPAY’s, and that LIPAY “did not have any system installed within Liberia”. The NLA suspended the licence on 16 December 2025.

The Hearing Officer set out the case for LIPAY first: no assignment was signed, no consideration changed hands, the NLA’s own expert agreed that advertising a third-party brand is not a transfer, and “associate” is not defined in Regulation 001. He then rejected it: “It was not co-branding. It was a substitution.” Routing player funds to accounts in a brand’s name, hiding the DIDIANE agreement from the regulator and letting an unlicensed foreign entity operate through the licence was “a purported transfer” under s. 6.9. The judgment: LIPAY liable under ss. 6.4, 6.9, 14.1(b) and 14.1(d) of Regulation 001; licence revoked; USD 10,000 in fines, USD 2,500 per violation; a two-year bar on reapplying; publication of the judgment at LIPAY’s expense. The complaint against “The Management of 1XBET” was dismissed for misjoinder: a brand is not a legal entity and cannot be sued, or licensed.

Ninety-two days later the bar was gone. Focus Gaming News reported on 28 September 2026 that the parties signed a settlement on 14 September and that the NLA issued LIPAY a new one-year licence on 22 September 2026 for sports betting, online casino and online lottery, “conditional on ongoing compliance”. The NLA site carries the ruling and not the settlement; the operator list has not caught up either way.

The offer against the regulator

Vendor pages in the top ten for this query were opened on 27 October 2026. Set against the instruments:

What the offers say	What the NLA documents say
”Application fee USD 5,000; issuance USD 25,000 to 50,000 depending on scale; renewal USD 10,000 to 20,000”	Application USD 500; online casino USD 80,000 a year; online sports betting USD 90,000 a year; renewal at the same annual fee (Appendix III-A)
“About EUR 50,000 all-in, including incorporation, address, AML officer and all NLA fees"	"Do not pay a ‘turnkey €50,000’ quotation as if it were the official tariff. Only the NLA sets the fee.” (Public Notice, 10 Sep 2026)
“One International Integrated Online Gaming License covering casino, sports betting, lottery, eSports and prediction markets”	Separate classes with separate fees; a prediction market needs its own USD 80,000 licence (art. 27.1); “international” appears in no fee line
”30 days from complete submission”	30-day review of a complete file (Reg. 001 s. 6.5) after at least 15 working days of due diligence and a presentation; the charter says 14 working days; Board approval and payment in full come before issue
”0% tax”	Outside the NLA’s instruments; the Good-Cause Levy of up to 1% of GGR with a USD 25,000 floor is inside them. We did not verify Liberia’s corporate or gaming tax treatment and make no claim about it
”Licence issued by the Commission"	"There is no ‘Liberia Online Gaming and Casino Commission.’ That name is not a government body.”

An operator with a licence certificate from an intermediary has, on the NLA’s account, a document it will not confirm, a fee paid to an account that is not the Republic’s, and a route to reissue “on terms to be determined by the Authority”. The route to a licence the NLA will confirm is the one in Regulation 001: a Liberian company with tax clearance and an office, a USD 750,000 portfolio, a presentation in Monrovia, and USD 80,000 or 90,000 a year paid before issue.

Readers comparing African markets will find Kenya’s one-year online licence, at KES 60m in year one, in the Kenya online gambling licence article and the Kenya gambling licence profile; fees across the licences we price are in the all-jurisdiction cost comparison.

What we could not verify

• The Gazette date of Resolution 005. The NLA site gives the adoption date, 29 April 2026, and the announcement date, 8 August; publication in the Official Gazette, which article 1.3 makes a condition of entry into force, is not shown. The 180-day capital transition and the “legally in force upon adoption” levy are dated from adoption above.
• The levy rate. Articles 5.7 to 5.9 cap it at 1% and leave the rate to the Board; no Board decision on the rate is published.
• The levy’s double floor. Whether article 5.10’s USD 50,000 combined minimum or article 5.9’s “no separate or additional contribution” governs.
• The Seven Blue agreement. The NLA’s notice refers to an Online Gaming Licensing Service Agreement; the press reported a signing on 2 April 2026 and a presentation on 11 May. The agreement itself, and whether it ever authorised Seven Blue to sell licences, is not public.
• The Commission’s claims. Reported as a LinkedIn statement citing government approvals; we could not open the report or find the instrument.
• The charter’s USD 80,000. The December 2024 service charter lists “Sports Bet (Physical + Online) 80,000 USD” and “Online Only 90,000”. Resolution 004 of January 2024 and Resolution 005 both say USD 90,000 for each; we treat the charter figure as superseded.
• Tax. We read no Liberian tax instrument. Nothing here says what an operator pays the Liberia Revenue Authority.
• Applications pending and licences “reissued”. The NLA has not published how many operators paid an intermediary or how many have applied for reissue.