Gambling licence numbers explained

What a licence number actually identifies

A licence number is an index into a register of licensees. It answers “which company holds this authorisation?” and nothing else. Whether the site in front of you belongs to that company is a separate question, which registers answer separately or not at all.

Licensee

The legal entity the regulator licensed, and what the number points at — a registered company name, often with a parent group beside it.

Trading name or brand

The name on the front of the website — recorded against the licensee in some registers, published separately in others, and frequently not the name the number resolves to.

Domain

The address in your browser. Only some registers publish domains, and where they do the list may be supplied by the business rather than compiled by the regulator.

Great Britain’s register makes the structure explicit: its business records carry an account number and account name, a head office address, a licence status, activity dates, and counts of trading names, domain names and premises. Names and domains hang off a company record; they are not what the number identifies.

Malta puts two numbers on one record — a Registration Number from the Maltese companies registry and a separate Authorisation Number from the gaming regulator, which are not interchangeable. Curaçao’s registry lists the licensee, whether it is B2B or B2C, and its Chamber of Commerce number. Gibraltar goes furthest: its table lists corporate entities, and the brands each covers sit in a separate “Approved Brands” document reached from that row.

Five registers, five vocabularies

There is no shared identifier standard. The word used for the number, whether it is published at all, and whether domains appear beside it all differ.

Each row describes how the register was structured on the date checked, not what any operator holds.

Type vocabularies diverge within a jurisdiction too. Gibraltar’s table labels rows Gaming Operator (B2C), Bookmaker (B2C), Gambling Services (B2B) and three further variants, while the brand documents underneath use descriptions that only partly correspond to those labels — some in older wording such as “B2C Remote Bookmaker’s Licence”, others tracking a register label such as “B2B Gambling Services” — each with an “RGL No.” beside it.

The Isle of Man licenses online gambling under the Online Gambling Regulation Act 2001 (OGRA) and publishes a licence type where others publish a number: Full, Network Services and Software Supply on the date checked. Its own fee schedule also names a Sub Licence and a Token Based Software Licence; neither appeared in the register.

The one place a regulator prescribes the number

Licence condition 8.1.1 in Great Britain requires a remote licensee to display, on every screen from which customers can access gambling, three things together: a statement that it is licensed and regulated by the Gambling Commission, its account number, and a link — supplied by the Commission — to its current licensed status on the Commission’s website. The Commission also prescribes the wording, giving the single-licence form as:

“(Insert licensee’s name) is licensed and regulated in Great Britain by the Gambling Commission under account number (insert account number).”

Two details on that page are more useful than the statement itself.

• The link must reach that licensee’s own record

  The Commission supplies the link, hyperlinked to the account number inside the statement, and states that it is important the link directs to the licensee’s record on the public register rather than to its home page or the register service’s landing page. A footer link landing on a register front page is not what the requirement describes, and is a reason to search the register yourself.

• The short number is derived from a longer one

  The account number is the first block of six digits of the licence number, leading zeros removed. The Commission publishes its own worked example: licence number 000-012345-N-987654-001 yields account number 12345. That is why a footer carries a short number while licence numbers are long and hyphenated.

Scope matters: the condition applies to remote casino, bingo and betting licences, with named exceptions including ancillary, host, remote betting intermediary (trading room only) and two remote general betting categories. The technical requirements page is dated 11 June 2021.

Others prescribe different things — the Isle of Man, disclosures including a statement that the site is regulated there and a Government crest linked to a government page; Malta, a dynamic seal; Curaçao, a per-domain certificate rather than a register entry. None of those is Great Britain’s rule.

Matching a number to the site in front of you

1. Find the licensee name, not the brand

   Read the terms and conditions or the footer for the company name and registered address. That is what a register can confirm; the brand on the homepage usually is not.

2. Search the register belonging to the claimed licence

   In Great Britain, type it into the field labelled “Search by business name, trading name, domain name or account number” on the register of gambling businesses (opens official website). For Curaçao, open the licence register page (opens official website) and search inside the online gaming licences PDF. For Gibraltar, open the Register of Licence Holders (opens official website) and use find-on-page for the legal company name. The Isle of Man’s online register (opens official website) is an expandable list; Malta’s Licensee Register (opens official website) searches by licensee name, status or gaming service, with a URL Checker tab beside it.

3. Confirm it resolves to the same company

   A number resolving to a company other than the one named in the terms is a mismatch, not a match.

4. Confirm the domain, where the register publishes one

   Great Britain records domains against the business, the Isle of Man’s web register lists them, and Malta has a URL Checker. Gibraltar and Curaçao publish none — so there, a matched number cannot tell you the site belongs to the licensee.

5. Read the status, and notice where it is missing

   Great Britain publishes a status against each licence and another against each domain. Malta’s status is a search filter and is not shown in the result card. Gibraltar’s table has no status column, and Curaçao’s is free text.

Numbers belonging to genuine licensees get copied

A licence number is a public fact. In Great Britain a licensee is required to print it; in Curaçao and Malta it sits in a register anyone can download or search. Copying one onto another website costs nothing, and regulators publish evidence that it happens.

• The Isle of Man maintains a register of unlicensed gambling websites (opens official website), stating that websites occasionally appear purporting to be licensed by the GSC and that where these come to its attention it will post information there to keep the public informed. It is keyed on the domain, with entries back to 2018.
• Gibraltar publishes dated consumer warnings (opens official website) about unlicensed sites, including sites falsely claiming Gibraltar licensing or affiliation with Gibraltar-licensed brands.
• Curaçao issued a public warning about unauthorised domains in January 2026.

Each list records what that regulator has noticed and acted on; a domain’s absence from one is not a finding about that domain. The structural point is what makes this survivable: the number can be copied, the register record cannot.

Why this page publishes no number-format rules

The obvious thing to put here is a table of what a real licence number looks like in each jurisdiction, with check digits. We do not publish one: the material to build it honestly is not in the sources we read. A format is trivial to imitate; only a register lookup is evidence.

• Great Britain. The account number is derived from the licence number — first block of six digits, leading zeros removed — with a worked example published. This is the only derivation rule sourced on this page.
• Curaçao. The online registry shows numbers shaped OGL/<year>/<n>/<n> and CGA/<year>/<n>/<n>; certificate holders use CGA/TSL/<year>/<nn> and CGA/ADR/<year>/<nn>; the land-based registry uses a different scheme again. Patterns visible in published files, not a documented scheme.
• Malta. An authorisation number shaped MGA/<segment>/<number>/<year>, with B2C and CRP among the observed segments, beside a company registration number written as C and digits.
• Gibraltar and the Isle of Man. Nothing. Gibraltar’s brand documents show an “RGL No.” and a number; the Isle of Man publishes none.

Common questions

Primary sources

Each link below goes to the issuing authority’s own website. Where a page could not be retrieved by our automated checks, that is stated rather than hidden.

• Gambling Commission About us — Gambling Commission
  No last-updated date shown. The page draws the Commission's own territorial distinction: it regulates 'most types of gambling in Great Britain' but regulates 'The National Lottery in the UK'. Great Britain is not the United Kingdom, and the distinction must not be flattened.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Approved alternative dispute resolution (ADR) providers
  Over a year and a half stale at the check date, and the list is volatile — the page already records one removal. It sits in the licensees-and-businesses section, not the consumer section, and the consumer-facing ADR page does not link to it. The page renders one entity as 'ADR group'; reproduce names as the page prints them.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Complain about a gambling business
  Carries the Commission's own sentence: 'We do not resolve or make decisions on complaints regarding gambling-related transactions.'
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Complain about an Alternative Dispute Resolution provider
  States that the Commission 'can't get involved with the ADR provider's decision or ask them to reconsider', and names the Chartered Trading Standards Institute as the government-appointed authority for approving and overseeing ADR bodies under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act 2024. That sits alongside the older approved-providers page (last updated 15 January 2025), which calls the Commission 'the designated competent authority for gambling' under the 2015 ADR Regulations. The two pages cite different instruments of different vintage; do not write either role as a flat present-tense fact.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Complaints — routes published by the Gambling Commission
  No last-updated date. The hub itself does not restate the Commission's limitation on gambling-transaction disputes; that sentence is on the child page.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Complaints and disputes: procedural information, provision and reporting — 5. ADR requirements
  The load-bearing qualifier most secondary sources drop: the eight weeks run 'taking into account any times that the clock on the time period may have been paused'. ADR must be free to the customer, and outcomes are binding only where the licensee's terms so provide and the customer agrees — the guidance says licence holders 'may' include such terms.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Display of licensed status: technical requirements
  Gives the exact footer wording a consumer should look for, and explains why footers show a short account number: it is 'the first block of 6 digits, removing any leading zeros' where they exist. The Commission also states the footer link must go to the licensee's own register record, not to the register's home or landing page.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Download the register of gambling businesses
  Offers a combined ZIP, an Excel workbook and four CSVs (businesses, trading names, domain names, licences). The page publishes no data dictionary — no column definitions, no status-value definitions and no stated data currency.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Full register of gambling businesses, page 2
  Recorded because it proves pagination is a path segment, not a query parameter: this URL returns page 2 of 53, and was re-tested independently. Page numbers cannot be used to link to a particular operator.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Gambling and young people
  Gives the general minimum age as 18 with the Commission's own hedge 'In most cases' — that hedge is what signals the product-by-product variation and should be preserved.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Gambling Commission — official website
  No last-updated date is shown on the homepage. The regulator brands itself 'Gambling Commission' on its own site — it does not use 'UK Gambling Commission' or 'UKGC' in its own header.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Guidance to licensing authorities — Part 16: Age restrictions
  Guidance to licensing authorities, so land-based in focus. It confirms a minimum age of 18 for category A, B and C machines and states there is 'no minimum age for players of category D machines'. It gives no age figures for the National Lottery, society lotteries, football pools, casino, betting, bingo or remote gambling.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission How to complain about a gambling business
  Sets the eight-week window for the operator to resolve a complaint. It also references the third-party tool Resolver while noting 'the Gambling Commission isn't involved in how Resolver's services work'.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission How we tackle illegal gambling
  Carries the single most quotable line for a consumer page: 'A gambling licence issued in another country does not permit an operator to provide gambling to consumers in Great Britain.' It also records the prosecution split — the Commission can institute criminal proceedings in England and Wales, while in Scotland prosecution rests with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission LCCP condition 3.5.5 — Remote multi-operator self-exclusion (social responsibility code)
  The provision requires participation in 'the national multi-operator self-exclusion scheme' and does not name GAMSTOP — writing that 3.5.5 requires operators to join GAMSTOP is an interpretation, not a quotation. It applies to remote licences subject to a nine-item exception list. No version or effective date is shown on the condition page.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission LCCP condition 8.1.1 — Display of licensed status: remote operators
  Requires remote licensees to display a licensed-status statement, their account number and a Commission-supplied link to their own register record on every screen from which customers can gamble. Applies to remote casino, bingo and betting licences with named exceptions. No version date shown on the condition page.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission LCCP online — licence conditions and codes of practice in full
  Published in three parts. The page shows 'Version effective from 29 July 2026' but no separate last-updated stamp — the LCCP is versioned, so any citation must carry the version date.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission LCCP Section 3 — Protection of children and other vulnerable persons
  Index page only; the provision text lives on the individual condition pages it links to.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Licence activities — the types of gambling licence
  Lists the licence types, each split into remote and non-remote. It does not define which conduct triggers a licensing requirement in law and does not discuss combined operating licences.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Licence conditions and codes of practice (LCCP)
  Over five years stale at the check date. It gives no statutory basis, no section references, and does not distinguish licence conditions from codes of practice.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Licensing objectives
  All three licensing objectives appear in full on the page. An earlier record that two were truncated was an artefact of the first extraction, not a property of the page.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Make sure that the gambling business is licensed
  Six years stale at the check date. It contains none of the crypto, credit-card or non-sterling 'red flags' that search-engine summaries attribute to the Commission — do not cite it for those.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Opening accounts with a gambling business
  Confirms the Commission itself tells consumers they may search the public register by 'the company's name, or the name of the website or app', which matches the register's own domain-name search field.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Public register (public and players section)
  The consumer-section entry point to the register. Resolves directly, with no redirect.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Public register of gambling businesses, personal licences, premises and regulatory actions
  Links five registers — gambling businesses, personal licences, regulatory actions, public statements, premises — plus a Freedom of Information item. No last-updated date, and the page states no retention period, contrary to what search-engine summaries claim.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Public Register of licensees, premises and regulatory actions — digital service
  Service landing page with a 'Start' button into the register. Shows a build identifier ('Release-181') but no last-updated date.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Register of gambling businesses – full list
  Browsable list with activity and remote/non-remote filters applied by an 'Apply filter' button. Query-string search parameters are ignored: five patterns were tested and each returned the unfiltered list, which a reader who does not notice would mistake for a result.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Register of gambling businesses (search)
  The search field is labelled 'Search by business name, trading name, domain name or account number', so domain search is officially supported. Two caveats the register states or demonstrates itself: 'Domain names and trading names are provided by the gambling business' — the domain list is self-reported, not compiled by the regulator — and no Commission page defines what the status values (Active, Expired, Forfeited, Lapsed, Pending, Revoked, Surrendered, Suspended) actually mean. The search is form-driven: there is no link that runs it for you.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Regulatory actions register
  Searchable by 'Search by account, operator name or details'. The page states no retention period and does not enumerate the categories of regulatory action; record counts change.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Self-exclusion — Gambling Commission guidance for the public
  Distinguishes the online scheme from the area- and sector-scoped land-based multi-operator schemes, which it does not name. This refreshed page writes the online scheme's name as 'GAMSTOP ONLINE', while other Commission pages and this register still use 'GAMSTOP' — check the current branding before publication.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Self-exclusion with GAMSTOP — Gambling Commission
  Stale, and it conflicts with the LCCP: this page says 'All gambling businesses must participate in this scheme', while social responsibility code provision 3.5.5 applies to remote licences subject to a nine-item exception list. The conflict is recorded, not resolved — describe the LCCP scope and note the exceptions rather than publishing either version as settled.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Taking your complaint to an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) provider
  This consumer page carries no link to the Commission's list of approved ADR providers — it routes the consumer via the operator, which 'should be able to tell you which ADR provider to use'. It also records what ADR will not take: customer service issues, and refusal to accept a bet or a customer's custom.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Tell us something in confidence — confidential reporting service
  The Commission's own reporting service, reached by following the link from its illegal-gambling page; the canonical address was confirmed in the independent verification pass after the first research pass declined to publish one. It takes reports of matters such as unlicensed operation, underage gambling and money-laundering concerns, and it carries a limitation that must travel with any mention of it: 'Complaints received by this service will not be processed.' It is not an alternative to the operator-then-ADR route.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Types of lotteries and their regulations
  Visibly stale: it still says the National Lottery age limit 'has recently been changed' to 18, five years on. The figure 18 is confirmed; the framing is not usable verbatim. Search-engine summaries still return the superseded figure of 16 for the National Lottery.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Gambling Commission Unlicensed gambling: our approach to tackling unlicensed gambling
  The regulator's own blog, by Chief Executive Andrew Rhodes, dated 21 October 2024. Listed for completeness: no claim in the research rests on it, and it is not a third-party news source.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• GAMSTOP About | Gamstop Online
  States a range of 'from 6 months up to 5 years' with an automatic renewal option, and that 'Once you've registered, you cannot cancel your registration during the exclusion period.' It does not enumerate discrete durations and does not state an activation delay. Note what the scheme actually blocks: signing up for or using online accounts with gambling companies licensed in Great Britain. It does not make gambling websites unreachable, and copy that says so sets a false expectation.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• GAMSTOP Gamstop Online — national online self-exclusion scheme homepage
  The scheme's own site, authoritative for its corporate identity but not the regulator: it is operated by The National Online Self Exclusion Scheme Limited, Registered No. 10504973. The site now leads with the brand 'Gamstop Online'.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• GAMSTOP What is self-exclusion? — GAMSTOP help centre article
  Returned HTTP 403 Forbidden to automated requests and the body was not retrieved. This is the page that would settle the discrete self-exclusion durations, any activation delay and post-expiry retention; until a human opens it in a browser, none of those are stated here.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · bot-blocked