The market
Costa Rica has no gambling regulator and no online gambling licence. It is instead a long-standing base for offshore-facing operators, who incorporate locally and, if hosting servers in-country, obtain a municipal data-processing permit. This is explicitly not a gambling licence. The domestic lottery and online sports betting for residents are a monopoly of the state Junta de Protección Social (JPS); the offshore operators are prohibited from serving Costa Rican residents.
The model dates to the early internet-gambling era, when the absence of specific legislation made Costa Rica a convenient home for sportsbooks and casinos serving foreign players. Reports put the number of such operators in the low hundreds. There is no local regulated market to speak of; it is a jurisdiction for hosting and corporate substance, not for domestic play.
Regulation and licensing
There is no dedicated gambling authority and no sector-specific online licence. An operator forms a standard Costa Rican company (often an SRL) whose stated activity is online gambling, and, where it hosts servers locally, takes a data-processing permit from a municipality. That permit is a local commercial and data classification, not authorisation or supervision of gambling: once issued, the operator is not subject to gambling-specific oversight. The constraint is firm: no services to Costa Rican residents, and domestic banks generally refuse to onboard gambling entities, pushing operators to crypto or offshore EMIs.
The one attempt to build a real framework failed. Bill 25.057, which aimed to create a formal online-gambling regulatory regime, was rejected by a legislative commission in January 2026, so the grey-market status persists. Territorial taxation means foreign-sourced gambling income is not subject to Costa Rican gambling-specific tax.
Marketing and player rules
Because there is no gambling regulator, there is no advertising code, deposit-limit regime, self-exclusion register or player-winnings tax for the offshore-facing operators; they fall outside national gambling jurisdiction by design and must instead comply with general business, consumer-protection (Ley 7472) and data-protection (Ley 8968) law, plus AML and KYC obligations. The domestic monopoly, JPS, operates lottery and resident sports betting separately. There is no age-verification regime imposed on the offshore operators by a Costa Rican gambling authority.
What this means for your plan
Costa Rica is a hosting and incorporation decision, not a market entry. It suits an operator that wants a low-cost, fast, lightly-supervised base to serve other markets, and understands that the data-processing permit is not a gambling licence and carries no regulatory credibility with banks or serious PSPs. I would not present it to a client as a licensed jurisdiction, because it is not, and payment banking is the real friction. Watch whether any future bill revives formal regulation, but after Bill 25.057 failed in January 2026, do not expect it soon.
Sources
- Gambling Insider, Costa Rica, effective regulation is the industry’s path forward, checked 5 September 2026
- Gamblingmaps, Costa Rica gambling laws 2026, Bill 25.057 rejected, JPS monopoly, checked 5 September 2026
- Casino City, Costa Rican online gaming, Law 9050 and data-processing permits, checked 5 September 2026