A permission with consequences, which is not what a trophy is

Every page of this site argues that a licence is better evidence than an award, and until this one it argued it without showing the working, which is a reasonable thing to be asked for. The reason is structural rather than moral: an award is an opinion expressed once by a panel and then fixed for ever, while a "licence" (a permission to trade, granted on conditions the holder can be punished for breaking) is a relationship that continues. It is also one that somebody with an office and a letterhead can end.

The objection arrives before the method, as usual, and it is the right objection: a licence is not a quality mark, nobody played the games to award it, and the authorities that grant them are paid by the fees of the companies they supervise. All three of those are true, and we would rather print them than pretend the question never occurred to us. What a licence gives a reader is narrower than quality and far more useful: a named company, and a public "record" of what that company has done. It also gives a complaint somewhere to go that is not the "complaints department" of the company itself, which is the first and often the last stop on every other route.

Six things, and a reader can check every one of them

We put the same six questions to each of the nine authorities standing behind the brands on this site, and we chose them on a single rule: a reader must be able to answer each one in a browser, in a few minutes, without knowing anybody and without asking us.

Can the "register" (the authority's own list of who holds a licence) be searched from the casino's domain, which is the one thing a reader actually has in front of them. Does it then name the "licensee" (the company the permission is issued to, and very often not the name on the website) together with the number of its licence.

Is action taken against a licensee published at all, and for how long does it stay readable, because a register with a short "retention window" (the period after which an entry comes down) and one that remembers since 2013 answer two different questions. Does a player's complaint have somewhere to go, either to the authority itself or to an "ADR" body (an outside service for disputes, approved and named by the regulator) that the authority obliges the operator to use. Does one "self-exclusion" request (a single instruction to be shut out) cover every licensee at once, or must it be repeated site by site. And are the rules on players' money published, so that a reader can learn in advance what becomes of a balance if the company fails.

• the UK Gambling Commission

  6 of 6

  Great Britain

  • You can search the register by the casino's domain YesThe business register searches by name, trading name, website or account number, so a reader with only the website finds the company.
  • The register names the company and the licence number YesEvery entry carries the company, its registered address, the account number and the full licence number.
  • Action taken against a licensee is published YesRegulatory action is shown against the business in the register and again as a named item on the enforcement news page.
  • A player's complaint has somewhere to go YesThe Commission does not decide disputes about transactions, and it publishes the eight approved dispute resolution providers a licensee must use.
  • One self-exclusion request covers every licensee YesThe self-exclusion page states that GAMSTOP covers every online operator with a single request.
  • The rules on players' money are published YesThe guide on insolvency names three levels, not protected, medium and high, and online licensees must keep customer funds in a separate account.

  11 brands on this site: 888 Casino, Aladdin Slots, Amazon Slots, Betway Canada, Big Thunder Slots, Buffalo Spins, Crystal Slots, Dove Slots, Express Wins, Incredible Spins, Videoslots.

  The register · read verificato

• the Kahnawake Gaming Commission

  4 of 6

  the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake, Quebec, Canada · 2 more in part

  • You can search the register by the casino's domain YesThe permit holder table pairs operator and address and can be sorted by address, but the page itself is dated September 2023.
  • The register names the company and the licence number In partThe table names the operator and the address, but no permit number.
  • Action taken against a licensee is published YesAdvisory notices name the holder, the authorisation affected and the effective date, and the archive reaches back to 2012.
  • A player's complaint has somewhere to go YesThe Commission takes complaints itself and keeps a full time dispute officer, but may invalidate a complaint discussed in public or given to the media.
  • One self-exclusion request covers every licensee YesOne form sent to the Commission excludes the person from every site it licenses, permanently and irrevocably.
  • The rules on players' money are published In partThe regulations require player balances to be separately identifiable and covered by liquid funds at all times, but no separate bank account is required.

  29 brands on this site: All Slots Casino, Blackjack Ballroom Casino, Captain Cooks Casino, Casino Action, Casino Classic, Casino Kingdom, Euro Palace Casino, Gaming Club Casino, Golden Tiger Casino, Grand Hotel Casino, Grand Mondial Casino, Grizzly's Quest Casino, Jackpot City Casino, Kiwi's Treasure Casino, LuckyDays Casino, Lucky Nugget, Luxury Casino, Mummy's Gold, Platinum Play, Players Palace Casino, Quatro Casino, River Belle, Royal Vegas, Ruby Fortune, Spin Casino, UK Casino Club, Villento Casino, Yukon Gold Casino, Zodiac Casino.

  The register · read verificato

• the Malta Gaming Authority

  4 of 6

  Malta · 2 more in part

  • You can search the register by the casino's domain YesThe register's own page states that it can be searched by licensee name, authorisation status, URL or gaming service, and a URL checker sits beside it.
  • The register names the company and the licence number In partThe enforcement register gives the company, its registration number and the licence number, but the register's own result columns do not load without JavaScript.
  • Action taken against a licensee is published YesThe enforcement register carries suspensions, cancellations and revocations with their legal grounds, under a year filter running from 2013 to 2026.
  • A player's complaint has somewhere to go YesThe Authority takes complaints itself on a published form, and its directive obliges every licensee to engage a listed dispute resolution entity.
  • One self-exclusion request covers every licensee In partOne form reaches all licensees, but its declaration makes the bar effective in gaming premises in Malta and Gozo; online self-exclusion stays with each licensee.
  • The rules on players' money are published YesThe Player Protection Directive requires the player funds account to cover all player balances at all times, at least ninety per cent in the account, any shortfall made good at once.

  27 brands on this site: 888 Casino, All Slots Casino, Betway Canada, Blackjack Ballroom Casino, Captain Cooks Casino, Casino Action, Casino Classic, Casino Kingdom, Euro Palace Casino, Gaming Club Casino, Genting Casino, Golden Tiger Casino, Grand Hotel Casino, Grand Mondial Casino, Lord Ping, Luxury Casino, Mega Casino, Players Palace Casino, Prime Casino, Prime Slots, Quatro Casino, Spin Genie, UK Casino Club, Videoslots, Villento Casino, Yukon Gold Casino, Zodiac Casino.

  The register · read parziale

• the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, with iGaming Ontario

  3 of 6

  Ontario, Canada · 3 more in part

  • You can search the register by the casino's domain In partThe directory links every entry to the address it runs, but its search box matches site names only, so a domain typed in returns nothing.
  • The register names the company and the licence number In partThe operator filter names all forty-nine registered companies, but no registration number is published and the company is not shown beside the site.
  • Action taken against a licensee is published YesNamed orders are published as news releases, and the archive reaches back to 2009.
  • A player's complaint has somewhere to go YesThe Commission takes complaints itself once the operator has had up to ninety days, and publishes each stage with its timing.
  • One self-exclusion request covers every licensee YesBetGuard, the centralised programme live since May 2026, covers every regulated site in Ontario through one registration.
  • The rules on players' money are published In partThe standards say only that player funds shall be clearly and appropriately managed; the account duty binds the province's own schemes, not the commercial operators.

  18 brands on this site: 888 Casino, Amazon Slots, Betway Canada, Captain Cooks Casino, Casino Classic, Euro Palace Casino, Golden Tiger Casino, Grand Mondial Casino, Jackpot City Casino, Luxury Casino, Quatro Casino, Royal Vegas, Ruby Fortune, Spin Casino, Spin Genie, Videoslots, Yukon Gold Casino, Zodiac Casino.

  The register · read verificato

• the Direccion General de Ordenacion del Juego

  3 of 6

  Spain, for gambling of state scope · 3 more in part

  • You can search the register by the casino's domain In partThe search box is labelled for operator name or website and every row prints the holder beside its authorised addresses, but a domain typed in returned nothing.
  • The register names the company and the licence number In partThe register gives the holder, its licences game by game, its authorised addresses and its trading name, but no licence number.
  • Action taken against a licensee is published YesThe sanctioning resolutions hold 219 decisions filtered by year and by severity, each naming the operator, the file number and the article breached.
  • A player's complaint has somewhere to go YesThe Directorate hears complaints against state-licensed operators once the player has gone to the operator and waited a month for an answer.
  • One self-exclusion request covers every licensee YesOne entry in the national register of gambling bans covers all online gambling of state scope, and is passed to the regions as well.
  • The rules on players' money are published In partA security lodged with the Banco de Espana is earmarked above all to paying prizes, two million euros at first and one million later, but no separation duty was found.

  9 brands on this site: 888 Casino, Betway Canada, Genting Casino, Lord Ping, Mega Casino, Prime Casino, Prime Slots, Spin Genie, Videoslots.

  The register · read verificato

• the Alderney Gambling Control Commission

  3 of 6

  Alderney, in the Channel Islands · 1 more in part

  • You can search the register by the casino's domain YesOne plain page pairs each of the twenty licensees with every address it runs, so the holder is found by eye.
  • The register names the company and the licence number In partThe extract names the company and the licence category but no licence number, and the register itself may be inspected only at the Commission's offices, by appointment.
  • Action taken against a licensee is published NoNo. The Commission's own full index of its site lists no page of decisions, and its news carries nothing against a licensee.
  • A player's complaint has somewhere to go YesThe Commission decides formal complaints itself in four steps, ending in a determination with reasons and, if either side refuses it, a hearing before the Commissioners.
  • One self-exclusion request covers every licensee NoNo. A customer may set deposit, loss or wager limits with one licensee, down to zero, and no scheme spans the licensees.
  • The rules on players' money are published YesThe regulations require customer balances to sit in a bank account that holds nothing else, waivable only against an approved guarantee, with a monthly return to the Commission.

  21 brands on this site: Aladdin Slots, All Slots Casino, Amazon Slots, Big Thunder Slots, Buffalo Spins, Crystal Slots, Dove Slots, Euro Palace Casino, Express Wins, Gaming Club Casino, Grizzly's Quest Casino, Incredible Spins, Jackpot City Casino, Kiwi's Treasure Casino, Lucky Nugget, Mummy's Gold, Platinum Play, River Belle, Royal Vegas, Ruby Fortune, Spin Casino.

  The register · read verificato

• Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis

  2 of 6

  Alberta, Canada · 3 more in part

  • You can search the register by the casino's domain In partThe keyword search does reach the registrant from an address, but the site field is free text, so some brands return nothing at all.
  • The register names the company and the licence number In partEach entry names the registrant, any trading name, the class of registration and the expiry date, but no registration number.
  • Action taken against a licensee is published Not establishedNot established: the published table lists the sanctions that may be imposed rather than the ones that were, and the site's own search is closed.
  • A player's complaint has somewhere to go YesThe Commission takes complaints itself once the operator has had up to ninety days, and publishes each stage with its timing.
  • One self-exclusion request covers every licensee YesThe centralised programme offers three scopes, online platforms, land-based venues or both, and every operator must connect to the central system.
  • The rules on players' money are published In partThe handbook says only that player funds must be clearly and appropriately managed; the account duty binds the province's own schemes, not the commercial operators.

  8 brands on this site: 888 Casino, Betway Canada, Jackpot City Casino, Mega Casino, Royal Vegas, Ruby Fortune, Spin Casino, Spin Genie.

  The register · read parziale

• the Curacao Gaming Control Board, now the Curacao Gaming Authority

  1 of 6

  Curacao · 3 more in part

  • You can search the register by the casino's domain NoNo. The online gaming registry carries no address or website column at all, so a reader holding only a domain gets nowhere.
  • The register names the company and the licence number YesEvery row gives the licence number, the licensee, whether it is business to consumer or business to business, the company registration number and the dates of issue and expiry.
  • Action taken against a licensee is published In partAn enforcement register lists revocations with their dates, but states that it covers only action affecting a licence's status and may not be up to date.
  • A player's complaint has somewhere to go In partFree independent dispute resolution is compulsory at the operator's cost, but no list of certified providers was published and the Authority does not decide disputes.
  • One self-exclusion request covers every licensee NoNo. Self-exclusion is asked of one operator and covers only its own brands, while the Authority's joint programme is for land-based casinos.
  • The rules on players' money are published In partThe ordinance sets up a guarantee fund that licence holders must join to insure payment of player balances, but publishes no premium, level of cover or separation duty.

  1 brand on this site: LuckyDays Casino.

  The register · read verificato

• the Gibraltar Licensing Authority, with the Gambling Commissioner

  0 of 6

  Gibraltar · 3 more in part

  • You can search the register by the casino's domain Not establishedNot established: the Act makes the Commissioner keep a register of licence holders but leaves publishing it to his discretion, and his own site would not open.
  • The register names the company and the licence number Not establishedNot established for the same reason: the Act leaves the content of any published version to regulations, and no published version could be reached.
  • Action taken against a licensee is published In partThe Act lets the Commissioner publish a sanction, limited to the name and the type of breach and never while an appeal is open, but whether anything is published was not read.
  • A player's complaint has somewhere to go In partThe licence conditions make the operator run a complaints procedure and look into anything the Commissioner refers to it, but no dispute body is named.
  • One self-exclusion request covers every licensee Not establishedNot established: the Act names no scheme and leaves responsible gambling to codes of practice held on the site that would not open.
  • The rules on players' money are published In partThe licence conditions make the operator tell every customer at sign-up how far their funds are protected against its insolvency, but publish no separation duty or level.

  1 brand on this site: 888 Casino.

  The register · read parziale

What the grid says, and the one clear result in it

One authority passes all six, and it is the Gambling Commission: it is also the only one of the nine naming in public the outside bodies an operator must use when a dispute goes wrong (eight of them, listed), and the only one publishing a scale of protection for player money.

That scale is worth a line. The "level" is chosen by the business and not set by the Commission, so it has to be read on the operator's own pages (the register does not carry it), and since the end of October 2025 a business holding unprotected funds has to say so again at "sign-up" rather than once in a policy.

After that the picture stops being a ranking and becomes a set of trades, which is the honest shape of it. Malta keeps thirteen years of enforcement, filterable year by year, against the three years the British register holds. Its rule on player funds is an obligation rather than a slogan (the account must always cover the aggregate of player balances, with at least nine tenths of that sum sitting there, and any "shortfall" made good "forthwith" out of the company's own money).

Alderney is stricter still on the money, and alone among the nine in the way it does it; the rule has a number, "regulation 230A", and a shape: the account may contain nothing except player balances, no other business may be run through it, and a statement goes to the regulator by the twentieth of every month. It publishes no "enforcement" (what a regulator did about a breach) whatever, and offers no self-exclusion at all. Two gaps, in the strictest vault of the nine.

Ontario brought a provincial self-exclusion into service on 14 May 2026, which enrols a player across every regulated site within the hour and refunds "open bets" (the ones already placed and not yet settled) inside a day, and Spain publishes 219 named "resoluciones" (its sanction decisions), each carrying a file number and the article of the statute it rests on, filterable by year and by how serious the breach was held to be (2021 onwards).

Alberta is the only one of the nine letting a player choose the "scope" of an exclusion (online only, premises only, or both), which is a kindness and a weakness in the same gesture, since the choice exists to be narrowed at the worst possible moment.

The two the grid cannot flatter, for opposite reasons

Curacao publishes the most complete licence register in this set, 616 rows carrying the licensee, the company number, the dates and the split between "B2C" and "B2B" (selling to players, or selling to the companies that do), and it is at the same time the only one of the nine publishing no website address anywhere in it.

That is not a small omission. A reader holding a domain can reach nobody at all; that happens to be the one job this whole exercise asks a register to do, and the completeness of everything else around it makes the gap louder rather than quieter.

Gibraltar scores nothing, and the reason is not that it failed: it is that we could not read it. The Gambling Division's own site refused every connection we tried, from two directions, so four of the six stand marked "not established" rather than failed, and that distinction is worth defending on a site built to insist on it. A door that will not open is not the same as a room we have walked through and found empty!

Where the brands on this site actually sit

The arithmetic underneath the grid is the reason this page exists at all, and it is not an accusation of anybody. The two authorities covering most of what we list, Kahnawake with twenty-nine brands and Malta with twenty-seven, are not the two that protect a player most; the Commission that passes all six stands behind eleven of them, and the two Canadian provincial regulators behind eighteen and eight.

Nobody arranged that. Operators license where they can serve the markets they want; the result is a portfolio weighted towards the jurisdictions whose published duties are the lightest, and that is a fact about commerce rather than about care.

Kahnawake deserves a sentence of its own, because its self-exclusion is simultaneously the strongest and the harshest in the set: one form excludes a person from every interactive site the Commission regulates, and it is permanent and irrevocable. A person who breaks it forfeits whatever has been deposited or won, to a charity the Commission itself picks. That is protection written as punishment, and a reader is entitled to know which of the two it is before signing anything.

What even a perfect score cannot tell you

A grid of authorities grades authorities, and we would rather state the limit than let the page imply more than it proves. The brand on this site holding the best-regulated licence of the lot is the very same brand carrying the largest penalty in our ledgers, decided by that regulator in October 2025 and printed in full on its review page (the warning, the sum and the condition added to the licence). A strong authority is evidence that somebody is watching (an empty record proves nothing either way), and the clearest proof that somebody is watching is a punishment you can read.

So the grid is not a shopping list, and a reader treating six out of six as a recommendation has read it exactly backwards. What it tells you is what you are able to find out, which is a narrower promise than telling you whom to trust, and the only one a page like this can keep.

Reading a licence line yourself, in about a minute

Every card on this site carries the authority and the company in the register's own words, standing exactly where a card elsewhere would carry a "welcome offer" (the sum a casino promises a new account). Take the company name from the card, open the register this page links for that authority, and see for yourself whether the licence is live and what it permits; then look back at the window in the grid, because a "clean record" inside three years and a clean record since 2013 are not the same sentence in any language.

If a card anywhere cannot tell you the authority and the company behind it, you have already learned the thing worth learning, and it did not take you the minute!

• 

  888 Casino

  Virtual Digital Services Limited under MGA/CRP/121/2006, as the operator's own terms state · 888 UK Limited, Gambling Commission account 39028, in Britain

  Visit
• 

  Videoslots

  MGA/CRP/258/2014, Videoslots Limited (Malta)

  Visit
• 

  Grand Mondial Casino

  Malta Gaming Authority · Kahnawake · AGCO for Ontario, on a separate site

  Visit

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