Step 1: Find the Licence Details on the Bookmaker’s Site
Every Gambling Commission licensee has to tell you who it is and under what authority it operates, and the place it does that is the footer. The wording follows a standard pattern: the operator states that it is licensed and regulated by the Gambling Commission, names the company holding the licence, and gives the gambling commission licence number, usually described as an account number and running to five digits.
The company name catches people out, because it is frequently not the brand name. Ladbrokes and Coral trade under the same Entain licence, and talkSPORT BET and Parimatch share one held by BV Gaming Limited. None of that is suspicious; it is what happens when one company runs several brands. What matters is that the company in the footer is the one that appears on the register and in the site’s terms.
These are the red flags at this stage:
- No licence number anywhere in the footer or the terms;
- A Gambling Commission logo as a plain image with nothing behind it, which anyone can copy;
- A number that does not match the company named beside it;
- A footer naming a regulator other than the Gambling Commission while the site markets itself to UK players as UK-licensed;
- Terms and conditions naming a different company from the footer.
Step 2: Search the Gambling Commission Public Register
The register is a free public service, and it covers licensed businesses, licensed individuals, licensed premises and the regulatory actions the Commission has taken. You can search it by company name or by account number, which is why the five-digit number from the footer is the fastest route: names are ambiguous, numbers are not.
Open the licensee’s entry and read four things in this order.
- Status. Active means the licence is in force. Suspended means the Commission has stopped the licensee from trading while it investigates, and you should not deposit. Surrendered means the company gave the licence up, usually on leaving the market, and any site still trading on it is outside the framework.
- Activities licensed. For an online bookmaker you want remote general betting. A licence for something else, or for non-remote premises only, does not cover the website you are on.
- Domains. This is the check almost every guide skips and it matters most. The licensee’s entry lists the websites the licence covers, and a licensed company can perfectly well run a domain that is not on that list. If the address in your browser does not appear against the licensee, the licence you just verified does not cover the site you are looking at.
- Regulatory action. The register records sanctions and settlements against the licensee, which is the subject of the next step.
Two minutes is a realistic estimate once you know the route: paste the account number, open the result, read the status, then find your domain in the list.
Step 3: Check for Sanctions and Recent Regulatory Action
The Commission publishes what it does to licensees, and it is public for a reason. Sanctions and settlements appear on the regulatory actions register alongside the licensee’s entry, and public statements setting out the failings and the amount appear on the Commission’s news pages. Its powers run from a warning, through adding or amending licence conditions, to a financial penalty, suspension and revocation.
What appears there tends to fall into a few recognisable categories. Social responsibility failings, where an operator kept taking money from a customer showing clear signs of harm. Anti-money-laundering failings, where source-of-funds checks were inadequate. Failures to identify customers properly, including cases where someone held several accounts across group brands. Penalties in the hundreds of thousands of pounds are routine, and licence suspensions do happen: two operators had licences suspended in a single month during 2026.
For a customer, a fine is neither a reason to panic nor a reason to shrug. A single historic penalty followed by remediation says less about your money than the same failing repeating. A suspension is a clear signal to withdraw and wait.
What a UKGC Licence Actually Protects, and What It Doesn’t
This is where expectations need setting properly, because UKGC licence protection is real but narrower than people assume.
What the licence gives you: rules requiring fair and transparent terms; a complaints procedure the operator must run, with eight weeks to resolve your case and free access to an approved independent adjudicator afterwards; participation in GamStop; mandatory age and identity verification; advertising rules; free deposit limits, loss limits, time-outs and self-exclusion; and a published rating telling you how your balance is treated if the company becomes insolvent.
That last one deserves its own table, because the wording is precise and most bettors have never read it. There is no legal duty on a UK operator to protect your funds in insolvency, and the Commission takes a transparency approach instead: the operator must tell you which category it falls into, and must make that information available when you first deposit.
| Rating | What it means for your balance |
|---|---|
| Not protected, no segregation | Your money sits in the company’s own accounts and has no protection in insolvency. Permitted for non-remote and ancillary remote licensees only |
| Not protected, segregation of customer funds | The minimum for remote operators. Your money is held separately from company funds, but in insolvency it still becomes part of the licensee’s assets, so it is not protected |
| Medium protection | Funds are segregated and arrangements such as a Quistclose account or insurance exist to distribute them to customers in insolvency. There is no absolute guarantee of full repayment |
| High protection | Funds sit in a formal trust account, legally and practically separate from the company, verified and controlled by an independent trustee or external auditor |
The practical version: if you hold £400 with an operator rated not protected and the company fails, that £400 joins the queue with every other creditor. Operators on a not-protected rating must remind customers of this every six months.
What the licence does not do: it does not make you likely to win, it does not insure your balance the way a bank deposit is insured, it does not force fast withdrawals, and it does not stop an operator restricting or closing your account.
Offshore Licences: Curaçao, Anjouan and Malta
Most guides stop at the Gambling Commission. That leaves a reader looking at an offshore site with nothing to work with, so here is the honest version, tiered rather than flattened.
A curacao licence check works differently now, and any guide describing the old system is out of date. The National Ordinance on Games of Chance, the LOK, abolished the master and sub-licence model entirely: the four private master licence holders no longer exist, legacy sub-licences have expired, and the Curaçao Gaming Authority is now the sole issuer. Verification runs through its certificate portal at cert.cga.cw. A licensed operator carries a footer seal linking there, green for B2C and blue for a B2B supplier, and the certificate shows the licence number in OGL format, the operator, the grant date and a status of active, suspended, withdrawn or revoked. Check the certified domain matches the site you are on exactly. Any site still citing an old sub-licence is outside the current framework.
The tiering matters more than the labels. The Malta Gaming Authority is a serious regulator: segregated player funds, game fairness testing, a complaints unit, and players in many markets are properly looked after under it. Curaçao under the new framework has teeth it lacked before, including a live public register and powers of suspension and revocation. Anjouan sits lowest, with thin published standards and verification that is harder to confirm.
None of that makes an offshore licence a substitute for a UK one, and two things need keeping apart. “Licensed somewhere” is a question about the operator. “Legal for you to use in Great Britain” is a different question with an unsettled answer, and this guide is not legal advice. What is settled is the practical consequence: no offshore operator takes part in GamStop, so if you have self-excluded, those sites will not stop you, and using one to bet around your own exclusion is not something we suggest to anyone.
| Regulator | Where to check | What it protects | Dispute route | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK Gambling Commission | Public register, by company name or account number | Fair terms, age and identity checks, GamStop, free safer-gambling tools, published funds rating, advertising rules | Operator complaint, then a free approved independent adjudicator | Highest for UK players |
| Malta Gaming Authority | MGA licensee register on mga.org.mt | Segregated player funds, game fairness testing, complaints handling, responsible gambling requirements | MGA player complaints unit | Strong regulator, no UK cover |
| Curaçao Gaming Authority | Certificate portal at cert.cga.cw, by domain or company | Direct operator licensing, AML obligations, published licence conditions, public register with enforcement powers | Operator complaints process, limited external escalation | Baseline |
| Anjouan | Certificate or seal linking to the issuing authority’s verification page | Basic operator licensing | Operator complaints process | Weakest of the four |
Checklist Before You Deposit
Six checks, in order, and the whole page compresses into them.
- The footer names a licence number and the company holding it.
- That number returns an active licence on the regulator’s own register.
- The domain you are on appears in the licensee’s list of covered websites.
- There are no recent sanctions or suspensions against the licensee.
- You know whether the operator is on GamStop.
- You know the complaints route and, for a UK licensee, which adjudicator it names.
If you want the criteria we apply on top of those checks, they are on How We Rate, and the licence records behind our own reviews are published on Testing Data.