Legal casino gambling age in MoroccoMorocco has no general gambling statute and no independent gambling regulator. Its system rests on a criminal prohibition of unauthorised gaming houses and lotteries in the Penal Code, combined with exclusive rights held by three state-controlled companies: La Marocaine des Jeux et des Sports (MDJS) for sports betting, the Société de Gestion de la Loterie Nationale (SGLN) for lottery draws and instant games, and the Société Royale d’Encouragement du Cheval (SOREC) for betting on horse racing. Land-based casinos operate in several tourist cities. There is no licensing route for private online casinos or bookmakers, so the only lawful online gambling is the state operators’ own offer. Since late 2025 the MDJS has turned to the courts to stop offshore betting sites, with mixed results.
Key points
- Articles 282 to 285 of the Penal Code of 1962 make the operation of unauthorised gaming houses and lotteries a criminal offence, as summarised by iGaming Business (September 2026).
- The MDJS, created in 1962 and 90% state-owned, holds the monopoly on sports betting, including online betting. Press reports describe an unpublished 2016 convention with the state that extends this exclusivity to 2036.
- Online casino games are not offered lawfully in Morocco by anyone. The state operators sell sports bets, lottery games and horse-race bets online through their own platforms.
- In January 2026 the Casablanca Commercial Court ordered the three telecom operators to block unauthorised betting sites. The Commercial Court of Appeal suspended the order in late January and annulled it on 10 February 2026.
- We found no published national self-exclusion register or dedicated national gambling helpline. The MDJS online platform offers temporary and long-term self-exclusion and deposit limits, and all three state operators restrict play to adults aged 18 and over.
Last reviewed: 6 October 2026.
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Historical development
Organised, state-controlled gambling in Morocco dates from the first years after independence in 1956. According to Le360 (September 2021), the MDJS was created in 1962 as a public company attached to the Ministry of Youth and Sports, with 90% of its capital held by the state and 10% by the Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion (CDG), the state investment fund. The MDJS itself gives 1962 as its founding year. Médias24 reported in December 2025 that the MDJS’s betting monopoly was established in 1966 and reinforced in 1970; we were not able to read those instruments.
The national lottery followed. Le360 states that the Société de Gestion de la Loterie Nationale was constituted in 1972 and manages the lottery “within the framework of a monopoly”. The Loterie Nationale’s own website says it has been operating since 1971.
Attempts to ban gambling outright were made early. In 1965 the House of Representatives received a private member’s proposal of three articles, the first of which stated that “gambling in all its forms, including what is called the lottery, is completely prohibited in accordance with the teachings of Islam”. The proposal was referred to the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court. In decision No. 44/1965 of 28 May 1965, the Chamber held that the subject did not fall within the matters reserved to parliamentary law under Article 48 of the 1962 Constitution, and so belonged to the regulatory domain of the government. This helps to explain why Moroccan gambling has since been organised mainly through decrees, company statutes and conventions with the state, rather than through a single gambling act.
Horse-race betting was reorganised in the 2000s. SOREC was created under Decree No. 2-03-262 of 13 May 2003, which authorised the state to subscribe 99.75% of its capital. Decree No. 2-07-209 of 28 March 2007 transferred to it the racing activities and off-course mutual betting (pari mutuel urbain, betting in shops away from the racecourse).
Legal framework
The Penal Code
The general criminal rule is found in the Penal Code, promulgated by Dahir No. 1-59-413 of 26 November 1962. Book III of the Code contains a section headed, in the Arabic text, “offences against the rules governing gaming houses, lotteries and pawn lending”, as shown in the table of contents published by Maroc Law. According to iGaming Business, “unauthorised gaming houses and lotteries are criminal offences under articles 282 to 285 of the penal code”. The official consolidated texts on the Ministry of Justice’s portals could not be retrieved during our review, so we do not quote the articles or their penalties here. Readers who need the exact wording should consult the current consolidated version of the Code published by the Ministry of Justice.
The structure of the offence matters. The Penal Code does not prohibit games of chance as such. It punishes running gaming houses and lotteries that are not authorised. Gambling is therefore lawful in Morocco when it is offered by a body holding the necessary authorisation, and unlawful otherwise.
The state operators’ exclusive rights
Each state operator works under its own legal instruments rather than under a common gambling law:
- MDJS. The company describes itself as the “state lottery holding a national monopoly on the organisation and operation of sports betting” across Morocco, covering all sports competitions, including virtual sports, except horse and greyhound racing (MDJS). Médias24 reported in December 2025 that a 2016 convention between the state and the MDJS extends this exclusivity to 2036 and expressly covers online betting. iGaming Business describes the convention as unpublished.
- SGLN. The Société de Gestion de la Loterie Nationale runs draw games and instant games. It is listed as a member of the Association of African Lotteries.
- SOREC. SOREC is a public limited company under the supervision of the Ministry of Agriculture. Its legal notice lists the management of mutual betting and the organisation of horse races among its missions (SOREC).
Morocco also joined the Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions (the Macolin Convention) in 2021, according to Le360. Médias24 notes that the Convention treats as illegal any sports betting offered by an operator not authorised in the player’s jurisdiction.
Several industry websites cite a “Dahir No. 1-65-206” of 1966 as Morocco’s basic gambling statute. We could not find this instrument in any official source and do not rely on it.
Regulator and licensing model
Morocco follows a monopoly model: each type of gambling is reserved by the state to a single operator. There is no independent gambling authority and no public application process for private operators. Oversight is divided among the ministries that supervise each company. Le360 notes that the MDJS falls under the Ministry of Youth and Sports, and SOREC’s own documents place it under the Ministry of Agriculture. According to La Vie éco (November 2024), the MDJS board is chaired by the sports ministry and includes the National Olympic Committee and the Royal Moroccan Football Federation.
In practice the state operators contract out much of their day-to-day operation. In February 2023 the MDJS signed a contract with Sisal Jeux Maroc, a subsidiary of the Italian lottery group Sisal, to manage and develop its sports betting products in shops and online. The contract runs for eight years and can be renewed for two more, according to Consonews. Intralot’s Moroccan subsidiary operated the MDJS lottery games Tifo and Chrono under a contract extended to 31 December 2025 (L’ODJ, January 2024). For the national lottery, Le360 reported in 2018 that Sisal had won the SGLN’s tender to run its games and distribution network from 2019. These private companies act as service providers to the state operators. They do not hold their own gambling licences.
Land-based casinos
Casinos operate in tourist centres such as Marrakech, Agadir and El Jadida (Global Gambling News, 2025). The resort at El Jadida, for example, advertises a casino on its website. The Spanish group Cirsa runs four Moroccan casinos and expanded its Marrakech operation in November 2025. When Lottomatica announced on 2 September 2026 that it would absorb Cirsa, iGaming Business noted that Morocco accounted for about 2% of Cirsa’s revenue.
We were unable to find the published instrument that governs the authorisation of casinos, the authority that issues it, or an official list of authorised casinos. The Penal Code’s references to the “rules governing gaming houses”, together with the 1965 constitutional ruling that gambling is a regulatory matter, suggest that casinos operate under administrative authorisations rather than a statutory licensing scheme. That inference could not be confirmed from a primary source.
Online gambling: what is permitted and how it is enforced
The lawful online offer in Morocco is limited to the products of the state operators:
- Sports betting. The MDJS sells fixed-odds and pool betting online through its Cote & Sport platform, including live betting and the TOTOFOOT pool game (Cote & Sport). Under the platform’s general terms, it is run by Sisal Jeux Maroc under authorisation from the MDJS and is open only to adults aged 18 or over “residing in Morocco”. Players must provide a national identity card or residence card and a certified bank account statement (RIB), and deposits are in dirhams.
- Lottery games. The Loterie Nationale states that its games can be played online through its eloterie.ma site as well as at more than 1,600 points of sale (Loterie Nationale).
- Horse-race betting. SOREC built its own central betting system, launched in March 2022 (Morocco World News). When SOREC agreed in November 2024 to add international races supplied by Racing1, the announcement referred to betting “across digital and retail channels” (iGaming Afrika). SOREC’s own website could not be reached during our review, so we could not confirm the details of its online service.
No legal channel exists for online casino games, online poker or private online bookmakers. In the Cirsa prospectus quoted by iGaming Business, the company states that in Morocco “online gaming only exists for betting, which is operated by a state agency” and that online casino games “are not allowed”.
Offshore operators and the 2026 blocking case
Foreign betting sites are nonetheless widely accessible. In December 2025 the MDJS Director General, Younes El Mechrafi, told a sports forum held at the House of Representatives that stakes placed with illegal sports betting operators reached about MAD 3.5 billion in 2024. He estimated the loss at about MAD 500 million for the National Sports Development Fund (FNDS) and about MAD 200 million in tax for the Treasury (Journaux.ma). These are the operator’s own estimates. The same report says that the Office des Changes, the foreign exchange authority, had made electronic games and betting a priority sector for its controls in 2025 and had identified MAD 7.2 million of non-compliant payments to illegal operators.
The MDJS then went to court. According to Médias24, it had filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor in March 2023, investigated by the National Judicial Police Brigade, and had brought complaints against 36 social media influencers and 36 payment intermediaries. It also asked the Casablanca Commercial Court for an urgent order against the internet providers.
On 12 January 2026 the court, sitting in summary proceedings (référé, an urgent procedure that does not decide the merits), ordered Maroc Telecom, Orange Maroc and Inwi to block a list of unauthorised betting sites, together with their subdomains and associated IP addresses. Non-compliance carried a penalty of MAD 10,000 per day (La Vie éco; Médias24). The judge reasoned that internet access providers are “technically the only ones capable of putting an end to the manifestly unlawful disturbance” caused by access to unauthorised betting sites (Médias24).
The telecom operators appealed. The Commercial Court of Appeal of Casablanca suspended the order in late January (Lesinfos.ma) and annulled it on 10 February 2026 (Le Nouvelliste; Médias24). Médias24 summarised the appeal court’s reasoning as being that an internet access provider cannot be compelled to block sites whose content and legality it does not control. Le Nouvelliste noted that the ruling does not decide the underlying dispute about the legality of the sites. As a result, Morocco has no court-ordered or statutory blocking scheme in force for gambling sites, as far as we could establish.
Advertising
We did not find a specific statutory code on gambling advertising. The MDJS complaints against influencers show that the state operator treats the promotion of unauthorised betting as unlawful, but we found no reported court decision on those complaints.
Position of players
The Penal Code provisions described above are aimed at those who keep unauthorised gaming houses or run unauthorised lotteries. In the sources we reviewed, we found no provision that expressly makes it an offence for an adult to place bets with a foreign website, and no reported prosecution or fine of an ordinary player for doing so. The enforcement actions we found were directed at operators, internet providers, payment intermediaries and influencers.
That does not make offshore play lawful or risk-free. Paying a foreign operator generally involves transfers abroad, and the Office des Changes has identified payments to illegal betting operators as breaches of foreign exchange rules. A player who uses an unauthorised site also has no Moroccan authority to complain to, no access to the state operators’ self-exclusion tools and no regulatory route to recover unpaid winnings. Minors may not take part in any lawful game: all three state operators restrict play to people aged 18 and over.
Taxation
Because the main operators are state-owned, much of the state’s income from gambling comes through levies and profit transfers rather than a general gaming tax. According to Le360 (2021), “the State takes 30% of the revenues of SOREC, 20% of the revenues of the Loterie nationale and 20% of those of the MDJS”. The MDJS states that its profits go to the FNDS, which finances sports federations, elite athletes and sports facilities (MDJS). La Vie éco reported that the FNDS’s own receipts were about MAD 890 million in 2023. The Loterie Nationale reported that in 2022 it paid MAD 1,383 million to players and returned MAD 234 million to the public interest.
We could not verify the tax regime that applies to casinos. Industry summaries give varying rates, and we did not find an official source that sets them.
For players, two industry guides (Gamebridge; iGamingToday) report that the 2025 Finance Law introduced a 30% final withholding tax on winnings from foreign online gambling, to be deducted by banks or payment intermediaries from 1 July 2025. Gamebridge also reports a social solidarity contribution on the profits of gambling companies from 2025. We could not confirm either measure in the copy of Finance Law No. 60-24 for 2025 that we reviewed, or in a Tax Directorate publication. They should be treated as reported rather than verified. Players should ask the Direction Générale des Impôts or a tax adviser about winnings.
Consumer protection and responsible gambling
Responsible gambling in Morocco depends mainly on the policies of the state operators, not on statute. The MDJS states that it has held the World Lottery Association’s highest level of responsible gaming certification since June 2013, renewed in 2016 and 2021 (MDJS). The Loterie Nationale describes the prevention of excessive play and the protection of minors as strategic priorities and states that its games are reserved for people aged 18 and over.
The MDJS online platform offers the most detailed tools we found. According to its responsible gaming page, sports betting is “strictly reserved for persons aged 18 and over”. Players can set deposit limits and exclude themselves temporarily for 15, 30, 60 or 90 days. Longer-term self-exclusion suspends the account for two years, and reactivation requires the MDJS’s approval. The page offers a self-assessment questionnaire and advises players to consult health professionals or specialist addiction centres.
We found no national self-exclusion register covering all operators and casinos, and no dedicated national gambling helpline. Help is available through general health services. Our responsible gambling guide explains how to set limits and recognise warning signs.
Religious and social context
Islam is the religion of the state under Article 3 of the 2011 Constitution, which also guarantees “the free exercise of beliefs”. In Islamic teaching gambling (maysir) is prohibited. The Qur’an groups it with intoxicants in Surah al-Ma’idah, verse 90. The 1965 proposal to ban all gambling relied expressly on this teaching. Since then the state has kept gambling legal but controlled, and has directed its proceeds to public purposes, above all sport. Public debate in recent years has focused mainly on offshore sports betting and the exposure of young people to it, as the MDJS complaints against influencers show.
Recent and upcoming developments
- Operating contracts (2023 to 2025). The MDJS awarded its sports betting operating contract to Sisal Jeux Maroc in February 2023 for eight years. Intralot’s contract for the MDJS lottery games was extended to 31 December 2025. We did not find a report of what replaced it.
- Blocking litigation (December 2025 to February 2026). Hearings began in December 2025. The first-instance order of 12 January 2026 was suspended in late January and annulled on appeal on 10 February 2026, as described above. iGaming Business reported in September 2026 that the MDJS’s claim had been rejected. We found no report of a further appeal to the Court of Cassation by the date of review.
- Casino sector consolidation (2025 to 2026). Cirsa expanded in Marrakech in November 2025, and Lottomatica’s planned absorption of Cirsa, announced on 2 September 2026, would bring Cirsa’s four Moroccan casinos into the Lottomatica group.
- No online licensing reform. We found no published bill to create an independent regulator or to license private online operators by the date of review. iGaming Business described the region’s situation in September 2026 as an online “licensing gap”.
Casino listings for players in Morocco
The listings below are generated automatically from our casino database. They do not show that an operator is authorised in Morocco. Moroccan law provides no licence for private online casinos, offering online casino games to people in Morocco is not authorised, and the only lawful online gambling is the sports betting, lottery and horse-race betting of the state operators, such as the MDJS. The listings must not be read as an indication that playing with any listed operator is lawful in Morocco.
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Sources and further reading
- Kingdom of Morocco, Supreme Court (Constitutional Chamber), Decision No. 44/1965 of 28 May 1965 on a law proposal prohibiting gambling and lotteries (published by the Constitutional Court; accessed 6 October 2026).
- Maroc Law, Moroccan Penal Code (Arabic text and table of contents) (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Constitute Project, Morocco’s Constitution of 2011 (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Société Royale d’Encouragement du Cheval, Mentions légales (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Marocaine des Jeux et des Sports, Notre mission (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Cote & Sport (MDJS), Notre mission, Conditions générales and Jeu responsable (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Loterie Nationale, Home page (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Association des Loteries d’Afrique, SGLN member profile (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Kingdom of Morocco, Loi de finances n° 60-24 pour l’année budgétaire 2025 (copy hosted by Casablanca Invest; 2024).
- iGaming Business, Lottomatica/Cirsa tie-up shines spotlight on North Africa’s online betting licensing gap (2026).
- Asmlal, A. (Le360), Jeux: voici comment l’Etat a réussi à réglementer les paris sportifs depuis les années 60 (2021).
- Médias24, L’accès aux sites de paris sportifs illégaux bientôt interdit au Maroc (2025).
- Journaux.ma, La MDJS passe à l’offensive judiciaire (2025).
- La Vie éco, Justice: la MDJS obtient le blocage judiciaire des sites de paris illégaux (2026).
- Médias24, Justice: les trois opérateurs télécoms devront bloquer les IP de paris illégaux au Maroc (2026).
- El Hourri, A. (Médias24), Paris illégaux: pourquoi la justice astreint les opérateurs télécoms (2026).
- Lesinfos.ma, Sites de paris illégaux: suspension temporaire des mesures de blocage (2026).
- Le Nouvelliste, Les opérateurs télécoms déliés de l’obligation de blocage de paris illégaux en ligne (2026).
- Médias24, Paris sportifs: le blocage des sites illégaux annulé en appel (2026).
- Médias24, Paris illégaux: pourquoi le blocage des sites a été annulé (2026).
- La Vie éco, MDJS: un soutien précieux au sport national (2024).
- Consonews, Paris sportifs: la MDJS et Sisal Jeux Maroc s’allient (2023).
- L’ODJ, Intralot prolonge son contrat de loterie avec la MDJS (2024).
- Le360, Loterie nationale: révélations sur le nouvel exploitant (2018).
- Morocco World News, Morocco introduces Africa’s first central horse racing betting solution (2022).
- iGaming Afrika, Racing1 partners with SOREC to bring international racing to Morocco for the first time (2024).
- Global Gambling News, Morocco: a unique approach to gambling regulation (2025).
- Mazagan Beach & Golf Resort, Casino (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Gamebridge, Morocco online gambling law and market guide (accessed 6 October 2026; industry summary).
- iGamingToday, Gambling Regulations in Morocco (2026; industry summary).
- Quran.com, Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:90 (accessed 6 October 2026).
