Foreign Casino Sites for UK Players in 2026: What the Register Shows

Updated September 2026

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Current as of 23 September 2026, against the Gambling Commission’s public register of gambling businesses.

A player looking at a “foreign casino” for UK play is, in practice, looking at one of two things. The first is a casino site registered abroad that still markets itself to UK depositors through affiliate pages and search ads. The second is a UK-facing brand whose operating company happens to be incorporated in Gibraltar, Malta or the Isle of Man while holding a full Gambling Commission licence. The two cases are not interchangeable, and the register, not the brand’s own footer, is what tells them apart. This page reads that register, lays out the licensing reality, and sets out what a UK player gives up by stepping outside it — without pointing at any one site as a place to play.

Where the Jurisdictions Start: The Licence Question

A site based outside the UK is not, by itself, the thing the Gambling Commission regulates. The Commission regulates the act of providing gambling to people in Great Britain. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 took effect, any operator taking a single deposit from a customer physically in England, Scotland or Wales needs a Commission licence, regardless of where the company behind it is incorporated. A Curaçao sub-licence, a Malta Gaming Authority authorisation, or an Isle of Man certificate does not stand in for one — the licences sit in different registers and answer to different rules.

The Commission’s public register is the test. On 18 September 2026 it listed 139 businesses holding an active remote casino operating licence. The register is searchable online and downloadable in full as CSV or Excel, so a player can check a brand name against it directly. Each entry gives an account number, a trading name, a licence number in the form (account number)-R-(number)-(suffix), and a list of the domains that licence covers. A licence whose number begins with the same six digits as the licence holder’s account number, followed by “-R-”, is a remote licence; the suffix after the second dash is a sequence marker, not a separate permission.

The register also keeps a domain list that records every website against the licence account that runs it. On the same date it held 1,065 active domain entries and 361 white-label entries — a white-label site is one that trades under another company’s licence, often through a platform deal the customer never sees. Active means the domain is currently pointed at that licence; Inactive means the licence account still exists but the domain has been withdrawn. A domain that does not appear on the list at all is the case to be cautious about, not because the list is exhaustive of legal activity but because it is exhaustive of licensed activity.

The featured brands on this page — Unibet, Betfair, Sky Vegas, MrQ, Betway, PokerStars, Paddy Power, Ladbrokes, BetVictor and Betfred — are all on that active list. Every one of them is held by an operator that also has a company seat outside the UK. Unibet is run by Platinum Gaming, which sits inside the Kindred Group structure. Betfair and Paddy Power share a single licence held by PPB Games Limited. Sky Vegas is Bonne Terre Gaming Limited. Betfred’s licence is held by Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited. None of that foreign incorporation changes the answer to the licensing question, because the licence on the register is a UK one. A site that is genuinely outside that licence is a different kind of proposition, and the rest of this page is about the difference.

The Top 10 GB-Licensed Sites Taking UK Players in 2026

What follows is not a ranking and not a shortlist to act on. The list is the set of remote casino licence holders the Commission register lists as active on 18 September 2026, drawn from major UK-facing brands that hold an operating licence of their own rather than appearing only as a white-label. Two brands here — Betfair and Paddy Power — share one licence account. They are listed as separate brands because the register records them as separate active domains, but they are not independent operators.

What the Side-by-Side Looks Like

The table below lines the ten brands up on the four matters that matter to a reader comparing them: the brand itself, the licence holder and the licence number on the register, the domain status, and whether the page’s own subject — the foreign-versus-licensed question — is something the register resolves for that brand or leaves open. The fifth column is not a filler; it is the column that flags, for each brand, which way the jurisdiction question lands.

Every brand in the table sits inside a UK-licensed operator. That is the one finding the table carries. It does not tell a reader which site to pick, because none of these sites is identical to any other on the rules a player feels at the cashier and on the reels, and the register does not record those differences.

Unibet — Kindred’s UK-Facing Casino Brand

Unibet’s UK domain sits on the register under account 45322, with Platinum Gaming Limited as the licence holder and licence 045322-R-324275-019 covering the operation. The brand is part of the wider Kindred group, with a long history of cross-border online gambling; what UK players see at unibet.co.uk is the GB-licensed version of that offer, not the European one. A player comparing Unibet against a peer set is comparing two GB-licensed brands, not a licensed brand against an offshore one.

The site is one of the longer-established UK online casinos and tends to come up in any UK-facing review that bothers to check the register. It carries the standard GAMSTOP enrolment that every GB-licensed casino must, and the 10x wagering cap that took effect on 19 December 2025 applies to its welcome terms. A reader who wants a single judgement rather than a list of facts: Unibet is a GB-licensed operator with a familiar sportsbook-and-casino package, and the foreign-casino question does not apply to it, because the licence is the right one.

Betfair — Paddy Power’s Stablemate Under One Licence

Betfair’s UK casino runs on the same licence account as Paddy Power: account 39411, PPB Games Limited, licence 039411-R-319335-010. Betfair and Paddy Power both appear as active domains of that single licence. The Commission’s rule that a remote licence covers every domain listed against it is what allows the two brands to operate from the same licence without each needing its own.

The two brands compete on product, not on licence status, and a player who tries to compare them on regulatory grounds is comparing the same thing twice. What separates them is game library, sportsbook depth, and the small print on bonuses — none of which the register records. The verdict is the same as for any peer brand on the list: a GB-licensed operator, fully covered by the protections that licence brings, and not a foreign site in the sense the page is asking about.

Sky Vegas — Bonne Terre’s Slots-First Offering

Sky Vegas runs under Bonne Terre Gaming Limited, account 65519, on licence 065519-R-339675-002, with Sky Vegas as the active domain. The brand carries the Sky name under licence from Sky’s parent, and its casino product is slots-heavy in the way the TV-friendly marketing always promised. The licence is a recent one in register terms, but it is a full GB remote casino licence with no conditions visible on the register entry.

Sky’s situation shows the licence question from the cleanest angle. A reader worried about whether a UK-facing casino is “really” UK-licensed can run the licence number against the register and find it on the active list within a minute. The licence is the licence; the brand’s familiarity comes from the broadcast name, not from any special status. A Sky Vegas account sits inside every Commission protection any other GB-licensed site provides, and the offshore question never arises.

MrQ — The Smaller Site on Tek Fox’s Licence

MrQ is the smallest operator on this list by traffic, and it is the one where the licence lookup matters most because the brand is less well-known. Tek Fox Ltd is the licence holder, on account 60629, with MrQ listed as the active domain under licence 060629-R-337532-004. The site has built a reputation on no-wagering free-spin promotions, which is exactly the kind of offer the 10x wagering cap that took effect in December 2025 has reshaped: it does not ban no-wagering spins, but it does ban the mixed-product bonuses and stacked offers that compete with them.

The point for the foreign-casino question is that MrQ’s relative obscurity is no reason to doubt its licence status. The register is the test, and the test passes. A player comparing MrQ against a longer-established competitor is comparing licensed operators, not licensed against unlicensed, and the page’s central question — what does a UK player give up on a site that is genuinely offshore — does not apply here.

Betway — A Single-Licence Brand With Global Reach

Betway’s UK casino runs on a Betway Limited licence — account 39392 should read 39372 as the research states it — under 039372-R-319367-029, with the brand’s active domain. The brand is one of the better-known cross-border operators in UK-facing gambling, with sportsbook and casino products in several regulated markets. As with Unibet, what UK players see is the GB-licensed slice of an international brand, and the slice is the only slice the Commission regulates.

Betway’s standing on this list is the same as for any other operator: it is a GB-licensed operator. A reader looking at Betway because the topic suggested a “foreign” option has landed on a brand whose foreign footprint is a corporate fact, not a licensing one. The site accepts UK players because it has the licence that lets it, not because the Commission has waved an exception through.

PokerStars — Stars Interactive’s UK-Only Domain

PokerStars runs a UK-specific casino under Stars Interactive Limited, account 39108, on licence 039108-R-319334-026. The active UK domain is PokerStars, not the global site, which is a deliberate split: the UK-facing product runs under UK rules and the global site runs under whichever jurisdiction the regulator in question sits in. A player who tries to access the global PokerStars site from a UK IP is bounced to the UK site, which is the version the Commission regulates.

PokerStars is the clearest illustration on the list of what a foreign-rooted brand looks like once it has done the licensing work properly. The parent company is international, the software library is shared across jurisdictions, but the UK player only ever sees the GB-licensed product. GAMSTOP enrolment, age and identity verification, the slot stake caps, the bonus cap — all apply, because the licence requires them. A site that wants to take UK players legally has to build this kind of split, and PokerStars is what the split looks like when it has been built.

Paddy Power — The Same Licence as Betfair

Paddy Power’s UK casino is the second half of the PPB Games Limited licence account, sitting on 039411-R-319335-010 alongside Betfair. Both Paddy Power and Betfair are listed as active domains of the same licence. The Flutter-owned brands — Paddy Power and Betfair are Flutter sister sites — share infrastructure and often share promotions, which is one reason the Commission allows the dual-domain arrangement.

For the foreign-casino question, Paddy Power is in the same position as its sibling: licensed in the UK, with no part of the operation that escapes the Commission’s rules. The brand’s Irish heritage is a marketing story, not a licensing gap. A reader looking at Paddy Power as a “foreign” option has found another licensed brand, and the licence’s protections follow from that.

Ladbrokes — One of Three LC International Brands

Ladbrokes sits on LC International Limited’s licence — account 54743, licence 054743-R-330863-014. The licence also covers Coral and Gala Bingo, both of which trade as separate brands against the same licence account. Ladbrokes is the oldest UK high-street name in the set, and its casino product online is the digital arm of that retail heritage. The Commission’s willingness to register multiple brands against one licence is what allows the Coral-Gala-Ladbrokes triumvirate to operate as distinct customer-facing sites.

Ladbrokes is licensed, and the licensing decision is the page’s only finding. The brand’s retail history, its ownership changes, and the corporate decisions that put it on LC International’s licence are matters of corporate history rather than matters that change a UK player’s regulatory position. The Ladbrokes UK player is protected by every Commission rule that applies to Ladbrokes UK, which is the same set that applies to any other GB-licensed site.

BetVictor — BV Gaming’s Casino-Forward Brand

BetVictor’s UK casino runs on BV Gaming Limited, account 39576, on licence 039576-R-319370-028, with the brand’s active domain. The brand has gone through several ownership structures over the years, and the current licence is held by a relatively young UK-licensed company that also runs the Heart Bingo and TalkSport Bet brands. BetVictor is the casino-forward face of the licence; the others lean more on bingo and sportsbook.

The licence position is the same. A player on BetVictor is a player on a GB-licensed site, and the question of whether the brand is “foreign” in some sense that matters does not have a positive answer — the BV Gaming entity is a UK company holding a UK licence, even if its principals and software partners sit elsewhere. The page’s verdict for BetVictor is the verdict for the licensed set: a UK-regulated operation, with the protections that follow.

Betfred — Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited’s UK Licence

Betfred’s licence is held by Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited — the Gibraltar seat is the company’s incorporation, not its regulator. Account 39544, licence 039544-R-319290-010, with the brand’s active domain. Betfred is one of the UK’s biggest high-street bookmakers, and its online casino is the digital extension of the retail chain. The Gibraltar seat is a tax and corporate choice that has no effect on the licensing question: the licence on the register is the licence that matters.

For the foreign-casino topic, Betfred is the clearest test case in the set. A reader who thinks of Gibraltar as “foreign” in the sense this page uses the word has found a brand where the parent company literally sits in Gibraltar — and the answer is still that the licence is the right one. The Commission’s licensing test does not turn on where the operating company is incorporated. It turns on whether the licence number is on the register. Betfred’s is.

The Fundamentals: How UK Online Casinos Are Set Up

The licensed UK market is built on a few overlapping pieces of statute and rule. The Gambling Act 2005 is the framework, covering England, Scotland and Wales — Northern Ireland is regulated separately under older legislation. The Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 closed the previous loophole that allowed operators to serve UK customers from white-listed overseas jurisdictions. Since 2014, the Commission has licensed both remote and non-remote gambling, and a remote casino operating licence is what an online casino needs to take a UK deposit.

Licence conditions are set out in the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP) and in the Remote Technical Standards, with social responsibility codes that bind the operator’s conduct. The Commission’s enforcement arm issues warnings, imposes fines, and can revoke licences — the public action list is searchable, and licence suspensions or financial penalties show up on the register entry within days. The framework is not a sticker on a website; it is the operating constraint that shapes every product decision a UK-licensed casino makes, from how a slot game cycle is timed to how a bonus is offered.

The verification step sits at the front of every customer’s journey. Since 7 May 2019, name, address and date of birth have to be verified before the first deposit or any play. A player cannot open an account and start spinning while the verification is pending — the rules do not allow it. Anonymous play is not available at a licensed site. For a player who has come from an offshore background, where some sites still let the first few sessions run before the paperwork is asked for, this is the first place the two regimes diverge.

Why the Register, Not the Footer, Is the Test

A casino website tells a player it is licensed. The footer usually names a jurisdiction and a licence number. That number is verifiable, and the verification is the whole test. The Commission’s public register is the authoritative list, and a brand not on it is not licensed in the UK, regardless of what its footer says. The 139 active licence accounts on the register are the entire licensed set, and every one of them is searchable.

The form of a remote casino licence number is the second check. A valid one starts with the licence holder’s six-digit account number, followed by “-R-”, then a number, then another dash and a suffix. The “R” marks a remote licence; the suffix is a sequence marker that the Commission attaches when an account has multiple licences of the same type. A number that does not match the format, or one that matches but does not appear on the register, is not a valid UK licence — and a footer that quotes one is best treated as an error or, worse, a fabrication.

The domain list on the register closes the loop. Each licence account lists its active domains, so a brand can be checked against both its claimed licence and the domain the customer is actually visiting. A licence that names domain A in the register and domain B on the website is a licence the customer cannot rely on. The check takes a minute and answers the central question the topic explores.

Legality: What the Commission Will and Will Not Do

Section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005 makes it an offence to provide gambling to people in Great Britain without a licence, and the Commission has a range of disruption tools it can use against unlicensed sites: cease-and-desist notices, payment-provider referrals, hosting-provider referrals, and search-engine delisting requests. The Commission does not have the power to block ISPs, so a UK player who knows where to look can still reach a non-licensed site. The legal pressure sits on the operator, not on the customer.

No penalty in UK law is aimed at the player. A punter who plays on a non-licensed site commits no offence by doing so. What the player loses on an unlicensed site is protection — no GAMSTOP, no Commission complaints route, no approved ADR. That absence of recourse is the practical cost, and it is the one this page keeps returning to, because it is the one a reader can act on. The Commission’s enforcement record on unlicensed operators is a matter of public record, but the enforcement helps future customers, not the one who has already lost the stake on an unlicensed site.

The licensed side carries its own limits. Players aged 25 and over face a £5 maximum stake per game cycle on online slots, in force from 9 April 2025. Players aged 18 to 24 face a £2 stake cap, in force from 21 May 2025. Auto-play is banned, slot spins cannot be faster than 2.5 seconds, and losses disguised as wins are not permitted in any marketing or feature design. None of these rules apply on an unlicensed site, because the licensed site is the only place the rules reach. The protection comes with the licence.

Player Wellbeing: What a UK Licence Guarantees and an Offshore Site Cannot

Player protection in a UK-licensed casino is a layered system. GAMSTOP, the national online self-exclusion scheme, has been a mandatory condition of every online operating licence since 31 March 2020. A player who registers with GAMSTOP for six months, one year or five years is excluded from every GB-licensed online gambling site for the period, and the exclusion cannot be cancelled early. The period ends, and the player chooses whether to reactivate. On an unlicensed site, GAMSTOP has no reach. The exclusion the player has set up does not apply there, because the site is not in the scheme.

Financial vulnerability checks are a more recent layer. From 28 February 2025, operators must run a check at £150 net deposits in a rolling 30-day window, using publicly available data. Wider financial risk assessments have been announced but were not yet in force at the date of the data snapshot on this page. The check is a soft prompt, not a hard block — it tells the operator to consider whether a deposit reflects the customer’s means and to act on the answer if it does not. An unlicensed site is not required to run the check and has no incentive to do so.

Before the first deposit, an operator must prompt a customer to set a financial limit — a rule that has been in force since 31 October 2025. The limit is set by the player; the operator’s job is to make sure the player has considered one before the first pound goes in. Reality checks during play, time-out tools for short breaks, and links to GamCare and the National Gambling Helpline are all required features of a GB-licensed site. None of these are the casino’s idea of customer service — they are the Commission’s idea of what the customer is owed.

Bonuses and Payments Under the New Cap

The bonus and payments framework has shifted in the last year. Wagering requirements on bonuses were capped at 10x from 19 December 2025, ending the era when a casino could advertise a £100 bonus with a 40x or 65x playthrough requirement as a headline number. The 10x cap applies to the bonus amount, not to the bonus plus deposit combined. Mixed-product bonuses — “bet on sport, get free casino spins” — are banned. No-deposit bonuses are not banned outright, but they are bound by the same wagering cap when they are offered.

A worked example shows the new math. Take a £100 welcome bonus with a 10x wagering requirement: the player must turn over £1,000 before the bonus and any winnings tied to it become withdrawable. At a £5 stake per spin — the maximum for players 25 and over — that is 200 spins. At a 2.5-second spin interval, that is 500 seconds, or about eight minutes of play. The smaller the bonus, the smaller the turnover: a £50 bonus with the same 10x cap is a £500 turnover, 100 spins, and roughly four minutes at the £5 stake.

The wagering turnover band at the new cap, for a £100 bonus, runs from around 200 spins at the £5 maximum stake for an older player down to 500 spins at the £2 cap for an 18-24 player. The two extremes are the band the figure sits inside, not two separate promises — a player on the £2 cap faces a five-times-longer grind than a player on the £5 cap, on the same bonus. The numbers are estimates under the stated assumptions, not a forecast for any individual session, and a player’s actual time to clear a bonus varies with the games played and the size of the winnings along the way.

On payments, the credit card ban in force since 14 April 2020 covers every gambling product in Great Britain, including credit cards routed through e-wallets. Debit cards and bank transfers were not affected by the ban. Apple Pay, when funded from a debit card, is fine; when funded from a credit card, it is not. Faster Payments, the UK bank transfer scheme operated by Pay.UK since 2008, runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with most payments arriving instantly and a per-transaction scheme limit of £1,000,000 (though individual banks impose their own, lower caps).

The Commission’s research ahead of the credit card ban showed why the rule was made: an estimated 800,000 UK consumers used credit cards to gamble in 2018, and 22% of online gamblers who funded play with credit cards were classed as problem gamblers. The numbers are not a verdict on any individual player; they are the population-level finding the rule was drafted against. A 10x bonus cap and a credit card ban are both answers to the same shape of problem: a player spending more than the bonus or the credit limit was designed to assume.

What an Unlicensed Site Looks Like in Practice

A site that is genuinely outside the UK licence — registered in Curaçao, Anjouan, or a similar offshore jurisdiction, with no entry on the Commission register — operates under a different rule book. The verification step at sign-up may not happen, or may be deferred until withdrawal, and even then may rely on documents the operator can choose to refuse. The slot stake caps do not apply, the 2.5-second spin limit does not apply, and an auto-play button may be sitting in plain view. The credit card ban is a UK rule with no foreign equivalent, so a credit card deposit to an offshore site is the player’s bank declining the transaction rather than the operator’s licence stopping it.

Bonuses on offshore sites are typically much larger than anything the 10x cap will allow a licensed operator to offer, with correspondingly larger wagering requirements. A £1,000 bonus with a 40x playthrough means £40,000 of turnover before withdrawal — the offer sounds generous until the turnover is set against the player’s normal stake, at which point the grind runs into days of continuous play. The 10x cap was the Commission’s response to this kind of headline offer, and an unlicensed site has no reason to copy it.

The complaint routes are the practical loss. A GB-licensed site must belong to an approved Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) provider, and a customer who cannot resolve a dispute with the operator can take it to the ADR for an independent ruling. An unlicensed site has no such obligation. A player who feels they have been treated unfairly on an offshore site has whatever consumer protection the jurisdiction the site is registered in provides, which in the more permissive offshore jurisdictions is often very little. The Commission’s enforcement arm works against the operator; it does not represent the customer in a dispute.

The Marketing Story Foreign Sites Tell UK Players

A foreign site marketing itself to UK players is not, by itself, breaking UK law. The targeting is what counts: an operator that actively advertises to UK consumers and accepts their deposits without a Commission licence is the one the Commission pursues. Affiliate sites in the UK are required by the Commission’s rules to carry the right risk warnings and to display the licensed-operator status of the brands they list; an affiliate that promotes unlicensed brands to a UK audience is itself in scope of the Commission’s enforcement.

The licensed brands on the register are not hard to find, and an unlicensed brand is rarely hard to spot. The Commission’s register search is free, and a brand whose name does not appear is one a player should treat with caution regardless of the marketing story in front of them. A site with a UK-sounding brand name, a UK telephone number on the contact page, and a footer claiming “fully licensed and regulated” is the kind of setup that warrants a check before any deposit. The check is one register search away.

Reading the Market in 2026

The licensed UK market has consolidated over the last decade. Of the 139 active remote casino operating licence accounts on the register on 18 September 2026, several sit behind multiple brand names — the Flutter group alone runs Betfair and Paddy Power under one licence, and the Entain family of brands covers Ladbrokes, Coral and Gala Bingo under LC International Limited. The number of distinct brands a UK player sees is much larger than the number of licences that support them. A reader comparing “ten different casinos” is sometimes comparing ten different front ends over fewer than ten licences.

The white-label segment, at 361 entries on the register’s domain list, is the part of the market the player is least likely to know they are in. A white-label casino trades under another company’s licence — the operator behind the site pays the licence holder for the right to use the licence, and the player signs up to the licence holder’s terms without necessarily seeing that arrangement. White-label is not a bad thing in itself, but a comparison between a directly-licensed brand and a white-label brand is a comparison between two different commercial setups. The register shows the licence holder, not the white-label operator, which is the practical reason a player who wants to know who they are dealing with has to read past the trading name.

The remote gaming duty the operator pays the Treasury is set to rise to 40% from 1 April 2026 — a model only, with the actual figure to be confirmed by HMRC. The duty is operator-side tax; players pay no tax on their winnings in the UK, whatever the size of the win. A player who has heard that gambling winnings are taxable in the UK has misheard; the position is the opposite.

What a UK Player Should Actually Do

The answer to the licensing question is procedural, not personal. Before a deposit, run the brand’s name against the Commission’s public register. Check that the licence number on the footer matches the format and appears against an active account. Check that the domain the player is visiting is on the domain list for that account. The whole check takes under a minute. A site that fails any of the three checks is a site the Commission does not back; a site that passes all three is a site where the protections on this page apply.

On an unlicensed site, the protection does not apply. The site’s marketing can promise any bonus structure it likes, set any stake limit it likes, and verify the player only at the moment it chooses. The wins, if any, are paid under the site’s own terms, with no ADR route, no GAMSTOP enrolment, and no Commission complaints process. A player who values the protection chooses the licensed route, and the choice is the only one the page actually offers.

The choice between two licensed brands is a finer-grained decision. Game library, sportsbook depth, payment methods, and bonus structure are the things that vary; the regulatory position does not. A reader comparing Unibet against Betfair is comparing two GB-licensed sites with the same set of protections. A reader comparing Betway against a Curaçao-registered brand with no Commission entry is comparing one licensed site against one that is not, and that comparison answers itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does it mean for a casino site to be based outside the UK?

A casino site based outside the UK is one whose operating company is incorporated in another country — Gibraltar, Malta, the Isle of Man, Curaçao, or anywhere else. The location of the company is not, by itself, what determines the licensing position. A UK-facing player is governed by where the company is licensed to serve UK customers, not by where the company is registered as a corporate entity.

Do foreign casino sites accepting UK players hold a Gambling Commission licence?

Some do, and some do not. The featured brands in this page — Unibet, Betfair, Sky Vegas, MrQ, Betway, PokerStars, Paddy Power, Ladbrokes, BetVictor and Betfred — all hold an active Gambling Commission remote casino operating licence, even where the operating company itself sits in Gibraltar or another jurisdiction. A site that is genuinely offshore and unlicensed is a different proposition, and the Commission’s register is the test for telling the two cases apart.

What protections does a UK player lose by using a foreign casino site?

A UK player on an unlicensed foreign site loses GAMSTOP self-exclusion coverage, the Commission’s ADR complaints route, the slot stake caps, the bonus wagering cap, the affordability checks, and the credit card ban. The site has no obligation to apply any of them. Wins and disputes are settled under the site’s own terms and the licence regime of whatever jurisdiction the site is registered in.

Is a Malta or Curaçao licence the same as a UK Gambling Commission licence?

No. A Malta Gaming Authority licence authorises a company to offer gambling under Maltese law. A Curaçao sub-licence authorises a company under Curaçao law. A Gambling Commission licence authorises a company to provide gambling to people in Great Britain. The three regimes have different player-protection rules, different complaint mechanisms, and different enforcement records. A licence in one is not a substitute for a licence in another.

Can a UK player self-exclude through GAMSTOP on a foreign casino site?

A GAMSTOP exclusion covers every site that is part of the scheme, which is every GB-licensed online gambling site. An unlicensed foreign casino site is not part of the scheme, so a GAMSTOP exclusion does not apply there. A player who has registered with GAMSTOP and then signs up to an unlicensed site is not protected by the exclusion they set up.

Why would a foreign casino site still market itself to UK players?

A foreign site markets to UK players because the UK is a large, English-speaking market with high consumer spending on online gambling, and because a share of the marketing spend converts into deposits. Marketing to UK customers without holding a UK licence is not, by itself, an offence for the affiliate or for the player. The offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005 is on the operator providing gambling to people in Great Britain without a licence, and the Commission pursues the operator rather than the player.

Created by the ”casinoappguideuk” editorial team.