Online gambling is licensed country by country. A casino that is properly licensed answers to a named regulator, follows written rules on player protection and can be checked against a public register. A casino that is not licensed answers to nobody you can reach.

The SlothBet website is informational. We do not operate gambling and we do not issue licences. We explain how licensing works so that you can check any site for yourself.

What a gambling licence means

A licence is permission from a state authority to offer gambling to the public. It is granted to a named company, for named categories of game, for a fixed period, and it can be suspended or withdrawn.

Holding one brings obligations. A licensed operator must verify who its customers are, keep player money separate from company money, offer deposit and time limits, connect to a self-exclusion scheme, publish fair terms, handle complaints within a set period and submit to audit. Its games are tested by an accredited laboratory before they go live.

The practical consequence for you is simple. Where there is a regulator, there is somewhere to complain, a rulebook the operator can be measured against and a sanction if it fails. Where there is none, a dispute is a private argument with a company you cannot identify.

Licences are national, not global

There is no worldwide gambling licence. A Maltese licence permits service to players in Malta and in markets that accept it; it does not permit service to players in Germany, Spain or Italy, each of which requires its own national licence.

This matters when you read a footer. An operator may hold four or five licences at once and serve each market under a different one. What you need to know is which licence covers your country, and whether an operator without a local licence is allowed to accept you at all. In several regulated markets it is not, and in Germany participation in unlicensed gambling is itself a criminal offence under § 285 of the Criminal Code.

Recent examples of markets that have closed to unlicensed operators include Brazil, which opened a licensed regime on 1 January 2025 under the Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas and requires every authorised site to use a .bet.br domain, and Great Britain, where operators must display their Gambling Commission account number on every gambling screen.

How to recognise a licensed casino

  • Named company in the footer – the legal entity, its company registration number and registered address, not just the brand name.
  • Licence or account number – quoted in full, with the regulator named. A vague "licensed and regulated" line with no number is not a licence claim.
  • A working link to the regulator – the seal or statement should click through to the regulator's own domain, not to a page or a PDF on the casino's site.
  • Full registration and identity checks – regulated sites verify your name, date of birth and address. Anonymous play is not possible in a licensed market.
  • Safer gambling tools – deposit, loss and session limits, reality checks, time-out and self-exclusion, with a link to the national scheme.
  • Age statement and help links – 18+ or 21+ depending on the market, plus a route to free support.

None of these signs is conclusive on its own. All of them can be copied. What cannot be copied is the entry in the regulator's register, so treat the site as a claim and the register as the evidence.

Where to verify a licence

Open the regulator's website yourself by typing the address, rather than following a link from the casino. Then compare four things: the company name, the company registration number, the licence number and — the check most players skip — whether the exact domain you are on is listed on that licence.

Every serious regulator publishes a register, and each names it slightly differently:

  • Malta Gaming Authority – a licensee register searchable by company, status or website, alongside a separate URL checker that answers whether one specific domain is covered.
  • Gambling Commission (Great Britain) – a public register of licensed businesses, with regulatory actions published beside it.
  • Gibraltar Gambling Division – a list of licence holders under the Gambling Act 2025, each with an approved-brands document.
  • Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission – a licensee register that names the permitted website domains and is downloadable in full.
  • Alderney Gambling Control Commission – a list of eGambling licensees showing licence category and every permitted website.
  • Curaçao Gaming Authority – dated register documents rather than a search box, plus a per-domain certificate lookup.
  • Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder (Germany) – a whitelist of permitted operators, searchable by website.
  • Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (Spain) – an operator search covering every holder of a Spanish licence.

A register entry can lapse. Check that the status is active and, where the regulator publishes one, look at the list of former licence holders and the enforcement register as well.

Malta's URL checker deserves a special mention, because it answers the question players actually have: is this particular website covered by a licence. Isle of Man, Alderney and Gibraltar publish permitted domains or approved brands alongside each licence, which allows the same check.

Seals that mean something and seals that do not

A genuine seal is dynamic. Clicking it takes you to a verification page on the regulator's own domain, and that page names the operator, the licence and its current status. Malta and Curaçao both run such pages, and in Great Britain the link itself is supplied by the Gambling Commission.

A fake seal is a copied image. It either does not link anywhere, opens as a picture, links to a page hosted on the casino's own domain, or leads to a lookalike address. Licence numbers on such seals are invented, expired, or genuine but belonging to a different company.

Two further points are worth knowing. First, the certificate page must show the same domain you are visiting; the Curaçao regulator states plainly that a certificate displaying a different domain means the site is using someone else's licence and should be treated as fraudulent. Second, badges such as "Verified Casino" or "Licensed & Secure" that do not name a regulator carry no meaning at all.

How regulated and offshore casinos differ

An operator licensed in your own market is supervised by an authority in your jurisdiction, taxed there, bound by local player protection rules and reachable through local complaints procedures and courts. Most regulated markets also run a national self-exclusion scheme that blocks every licensed operator at once: GAMSTOP in Great Britain, OASIS in Germany, the RGIAJ in Spain, Spelpaus in Sweden, ROFUS in Denmark and CRUKS in the Netherlands.

Offshore operators hold licences from jurisdictions such as Malta, Curaçao or Gibraltar and serve players in markets where they have no local permission. They may offer larger bonuses and lighter conditions, but a complaint travels to a foreign authority, national self-exclusion does not reach them and the protections written into your own law do not apply.

The weakest end of the scale deserves naming. Licences issued in the name of Anjouan, in the Comoros, are marketed heavily and cost little. Following an investigation published in December 2025, Comorian authorities described the bodies presenting themselves as Anjouan gambling regulators as fictitious entities, and the country's central bank has stated that they have no legal existence. A licence of that kind gives you no supervisor, no dispute forum and no recourse.

Where you choose to play is your decision. The difference in protection between these options is substantial, and it is better understood before you deposit than after.

Play with care

Whichever operator you choose, play deliberately and only with money you can afford to lose. Gambling can be addictive and is for adults only.

We have set out the principles of safer gambling, the warning signs of losing control, how limits work and how to self-exclude in our article on Responsible Gambling.

If you have a question about anything on this page, write to us at info@slothbet.com.

Last updated: 30 July 2026