How to Check a Gambling Licence: MGA, Curaçao and Anjouan, Step by Step

A licence seal in a casino footer is an image. Anyone can copy it, and a generated website can copy the licence number, the company name and the registered address along with it. What cannot be copied is the regulator's own record. This guide walks through how to check a licence against the public register for each of the three licences you meet most often on internationally facing casinos and sportsbooks, the Malta Gaming Authority, the Curaçao Gaming Authority and the Anjouan authority, and which mismatches should stop you before you deposit.

Before you open any register, collect four things from the operator's own site. They are usually in the footer and in the opening section of the terms and conditions.

• The licence or authorisation number, exactly as printed.
• The name of the company that holds it. This is a legal entity, often with Limited, Ltd or N.V. in the name, and it is rarely the brand name.
• The registered address of that company.
• The regulator named, and where the seal links to when you click it.

If any of the four is missing, that is already a finding. An operator with a real licence has no reason to hide the company that holds it. The check itself is then the same in every case: look the company and number up on the regulator's register by navigating there yourself, never through a link on the casino's site, and confirm that all four facts match.

Malta: the licensee register and the URL checker

The Malta Gaming Authority publishes a Licensee Register in the Licensee Hub of its website, mga.org.mt. It is a searchable table. For each licensee it shows the company name, the company registration number, the authorisation number, the type of authorisation and its status; opening a row adds the registered address, any termination date, contact details and a link to the company's seal.

Reading an MGA authorisation number

MGA numbers follow one pattern: MGA, a class, a sequence number and a year, as in MGA/B2C/211/2011. B2C means the company is authorised to deal with players directly, B2B covers suppliers to other operators, and CRP marks a corporate authorisation. The number belongs to the company, not to a brand, so several brands can sit under one authorisation. Yeti Casino, Hyper Casino and CasinoCasino all name MGA/B2C/211/2011. Searching the register for a brand name may therefore return nothing; search for the company named in the terms.

Checking the website, not just the company

The register lists companies, not websites. To confirm that the site in front of you is one the company is authorised to run, use one of two tools on the regulator's side:

• The company seal. A genuine MGA seal is a live link that opens a verification page on authorisation.mga.org.mt, the regulator's own domain, showing the company and its authorisation.
• The MGA URL checker at mgaurlchecker.mga.org.mt, which checks one web address at a time against the MGA's own record of the websites its licensees run.

A seal that does not click through, or that opens a page on the casino's own domain, verifies nothing. A real licence number paired with a website the URL checker does not recognise is the signature of a copied licence.

Curaçao: a register published as lists

Curaçao's regime changed under the National Ordinance on Games of Chance, which replaced the old system of sub-licences sold under a handful of master licences with licences issued directly by the Curaçao Gaming Authority. The authority's website is cga.cw; the older gamingcontrolcuracao.org address now forwards there.

The CGA's licence register is a page of downloadable lists rather than a search box. There are four: online gaming licences, land-based casinos, holders of certificates, and an enforcement register. The one to open for an online casino is the online gaming licences list; the enforcement register is worth a look too, because it is where action against operators is published. The authority also states on that page that these overviews do not guarantee the current validity of a licence and that no rights can be derived from them. Treat a match as a strong sign and a missing entry as a reason to stop, not the other way round.

• Search the online gaming licences list for the company name in the terms, not the brand.
• Compare the licence number in the list with the one in the footer, character by character.
• Check the enforcement register for the same company.
• Be suspicious of a footer that still cites a sub-licence number under a master licence. Those belong to the old system, not to a licence issued by the CGA.

Anjouan: one seal, more than one website

Of the three, Anjouan is the hardest to pin down. A genuine Anjouan seal should resolve to a validation page under verification.anjouangamingboard.org showing the licensee. Click it and read what it shows: the company name and the licence number should both match the terms.

The difficulty is that more than one website publishes under the Anjouan name, and their published complaint policies contradict each other. The details, and what each policy means for a player with a dispute, are set out in our guide to what MGA, Curaçao and Anjouan each give a player. For the check itself, the rule is simple: if the seal does not resolve to a validation page, or the validation page shows a different company, you have a badge and not a licence.

The tells of a generated or copied site

A professional-looking casino can now be put together in days: a white-label platform for the games, a template for the design, and generated text for every page. None of that is illegal on its own. What gives a copied or unlicensed site away is the paperwork, because the paperwork has to match a record it does not control.

• The seal is a picture. It does not click through, or it opens a page on the casino's own domain.
• The number exists, the company does not match. A real licence number from the register, attached to a company name that the register shows under a different number or not at all.
• The company exists, the website does not. The MGA URL checker does not recognise the domain, or the domain is newer than the licence the footer claims to have held for years.
• The address is a different address. The registered address in the terms differs from the one on the register.
• The terms name nobody. No company, no address, only a brand and a contact form.

One mismatch is enough to stop. A genuine operator's paperwork matches its regulator's record exactly, because the regulator holds it to that.

Which licence counts where you live

An international licence lets an operator offer its service; it does not make the service licensed in every country. Several of the countries with a hub on this site license operators themselves:

• Italy: online gambling runs under ADM concessions, and the concession number is printed in the footer of the operator's Italian site. The Italy hub lists concessionaires only.
• Poland: online betting is licensed by permit from the Minister of Finance.
• Ireland: the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland licenses remote betting, and some operators hold an Irish licence for their sportsbook alongside an MGA licence for their casino.
• Canada: Ontario runs its own registered market through the AGCO and iGaming Ontario; players elsewhere in the country use internationally licensed sites.
• Malta: the MGA is the national regulator as well as the international one.

Where a national register exists, it is the first place to look; the international check above applies to everything else.

What a licence check does not tell you

A clean result tells you who you are dealing with and who stands above them. It does not change the arithmetic of the games or the prices. A slot with a 96% RTP costs 4% of every euro wagered on average under any licence, and a match priced 1.85 / 3.60 / 4.50 carries a 4.05% margin wherever the bookmaker is licensed. A licence also does not stop an operator from limiting the stakes on a winning account or closing it under its terms; what it changes is whether there is anyone above the operator to complain to when that happens. Our guide to international gambling licences compared sets out what each regime requires of operators, and newly authorised operators are tracked on the new licences page. Whatever the licence, set your own deposit limits before you play; free, confidential help is listed on our responsible gambling page.

FAQ

How do I check if an online casino is licensed?

Take the licence number and the company name from the operator's terms, open the regulator's register by typing its address yourself, and confirm that the company, the number and the registered address all match. For an MGA licence, also check the website address with the MGA URL checker.

Why does the casino's brand name not appear on the register?

Registers list the licensed company, not its brands. One company can run several brands under a single authorisation, so search for the company named in the terms.

Is a casino with a Curaçao licence legal in my country?

That depends on your country, not on Curaçao. Some countries license operators nationally and treat everyone else as unlicensed there. Check the hub for your country before you deposit.

The seal links to a verification page. Is that enough?

Only if the page is on the regulator's own domain and shows the same company and number as the terms. A verification page hosted on the casino's own site verifies nothing.