A gambling licence is a permission issued by a national or territorial regulator to carry out specific gambling activities under conditions it can enforce. In Great Britain licences are granted activity by activity, and licensees must display an account number that links to their record on the public register. Malta licenses business-to-consumer and business-to-business operations separately. A licence does not endorse a business, does not improve a game's odds, and does not mean the regulator will settle an individual dispute.
On this page
- Licences are activity-specific
- Separate licences for remote casino, betting, bingo, lotteries and gambling softwareSource 1
- GB display rule
- Account number is the first six digits of the licence number, hyperlinked to the register recordSource 2
- Malta licence classes
- Gaming service (B2C) and critical gaming supply (B2B)Source 5
- Curaçao reform
- National Ordinance on Games of Chance in effect from 24 December 2024Source 8
- Disputes
- The GB regulator cannot overturn an ADR provider's decisionSource 9
What a gambling licence actually is
A licence is a permission to carry on named gambling activities, issued by a named regulator, on conditions that regulator can enforce. It is not a quality mark and it is not an endorsement of the business holding it.
The structure is easiest to see in Great Britain, where the Gambling Commission does not issue one general licence. It issues licences by activity: remote casino, remote bingo, remote general betting, non-remote equivalents of each, society lottery, external lottery manager, gaming machine technical licences and gambling software licences1. A business that runs an online casino and also takes bets needs authorisation for both activities, and a business that only supplies the games to other operators holds a different licence again1.
Malta divides the same ground in two. The Malta Gaming Authority issues a gaming service licence, described as a business-to-consumer licence to offer or carry on a gaming service, and a critical gaming supply licence, described as a business-to-business licence to supply and manage the material elements of a game5. Games are then classified by type, with Type 1 covering games of chance played against the house whose outcome is determined by a random generator, Type 2 covering games of chance against the house decided by an external event, Type 3 covering games where players compete against each other and the operator is not exposed to gaming risk, and Type 4 covering controlled skill games6.
This matters to a reader for one practical reason. When a site says it is "licensed", the useful question is always: licensed by whom, for which activity, and is the company named on the licence the company taking the money?
Who issues licences
There is no international gambling licence. Every regulator's writ stops at its own borders, and each one sets its own technical standards, advertising rules and player-protection duties.
Three examples show how different the models are.
- Great Britain. The Gambling Commission licenses operators and software suppliers by activity, and requires new products to be tested by an approved test house before release10.
- Malta. The MGA licenses B2C and B2B businesses separately and classifies games by type56.
- Curaçao. The jurisdiction replaced its long-standing master-licence arrangement with the National Ordinance on Games of Chance, the Landsverordening op de kansspelen, which the Curaçao Gaming Authority says came into effect on 24 December 20248.
A licence from any of these tells you that a regulator has taken the business on to its register under conditions. It tells you nothing about whether gambling is lawful where the reader happens to be sitting. Maldives casino laws sets out that question for the Maldives, where the position is entirely separate from any operator's licence.
What a licence number lets you check
This is the most useful part of the system, and the part most readers never use.
In Great Britain, licensees must display a statement that they are licensed and regulated by the Commission together with their account number, which is the first six digits of the licence number with leading zeros removed2. That account number must be hyperlinked to the licensee's own record on the public register, not to the register's homepage2.
The register itself holds records of licensed businesses, personal licence holders, licensed premises, regulatory actions taken against licensees and public statements issued after enforcement action3. The Commission's advice to players is to check that the business displays its licensed status and to click through to that register record4.
So a licence number is not decoration. Used properly it answers four questions:
- Does a licensed business of that name exist at all?
- Which activities is it actually permitted to offer?
- Is the licence current, or has it lapsed or been surrendered?
- Has the regulator taken enforcement action against it, and is there a public statement explaining why3?
Malta runs the same idea differently. The MGA's licensee register can be searched by licensee name, authorisation status, URL or gaming service, and the Authority also publishes a separate URL checker for confirming that a specific website belongs to a licensee7.
What a licence does not guarantee
A licence is a floor, not a ceiling, and there are four things it does not do.
It does not make a game more likely to pay. Licensing and testing confirm that a game behaves as its rules describe. The design still returns less than is staked over time, which is what our RTP guide explains in detail.
It does not mean the regulator will settle your dispute. In Great Britain, complaints that cannot be resolved with the operator go to an alternative dispute resolution provider. The Commission states that it cannot get involved with the ADR provider's decision or ask it to reconsider, and that the ADR provider's decision is usually the end of the complaint process9.
It does not cover activities outside the licence. An operator authorised for one activity is not authorised for another by implication; each activity has its own licence1.
It does not survive a copied badge. Licence seals are trivial to copy onto an unlicensed site. The check that matters is the register record, which is why both regulators publish searchable registers rather than relying on the badge37.
How this fits with testing and with our database
Licensing and product testing are separate steps that reinforce each other. A Great Britain licensee must ensure new products have been adequately tested by an approved test house before release10, a process described in independent testing explained. The licence creates the obligation; the test house performs the check.
The KiraBet provider profiles at game developers we cover record the licences a studio itself publishes, because a game supplier's authorisation is separate from the operator's. Our method, including what we will and will not record without a published source, is set out in how operator scores are calculated.
- RTP
- RTP (return to player) is the percentage of all money staked on a game that it is designed to pay back as winnings, averaged over a very large number of plays. It does not predict the result of any single session.
- Random number generator (RNG)
- Hardware or software that generates the random numbers used to decide game outcomes. In regulated markets, RNG output is tested to show that it is statistically random and unpredictable.
- KYC (know your customer)
- Checks a gambling operator carries out to confirm a customer's identity and age, and sometimes their source of funds. Some regulators, such as Great Britain's Gambling Commission, require age and identity to be verified before a customer gambles.