Every betting site puts a licence line in its footer, and almost nobody reads it. That is a shame, because it is the single most informative sentence on the page — more useful than any review, star rating or welcome-offer comparison.
Here is how to read it, and what the unfamiliar names actually signify.
Start with the register, not the footer
A licence claim in a footer is a claim. The regulator’s public register is the fact. Every serious licensing regime publishes one, and checking a company name against it takes under a minute.
Two things to look for. Does the licence exist and is it current — plenty of footers cite permits that lapsed. And does the licensed company name match the company actually operating the site, which is often disclosed in the terms rather than the footer. A mismatch between the two is the most reliable warning sign in this industry.
British licences and everything else
If you are placing bets from Britain, the relevant question is simple: is the operator licensed to accept bets from customers here? That is a British licence, with British advertising rules, British player-protection requirements and a British supervisor who can fine.
Everything else is a different instrument answering a different question. An offshore licence lets an operator serve a broad span of international markets lawfully from a single base. It does not authorise taking bets in Britain, it does not carry British protections, and any site implying otherwise is misrepresenting what it holds.
What an offshore permit actually involves
Take the permit issued by the Anjouan Betting & Gaming Board, currently one of the more common routes. A single authorisation covers casino, sportsbook, poker and eSports betting, rather than one application per product. The annual fee starts at €17,828 and tax on gross gaming revenue is 0%. The regime asks for no local office, no resident director, and no server hosted on the island; the applicant company is incorporated in Costa Rica, and the file runs remotely through an authorised agent. A clean application clears in four to eight weeks.
By comparison, Curaçao — for years the default — now takes eight to sixteen weeks after its LOK reform and does require a local entity, a resident director and an on-island server.
A revision in July 2025 aligned the Anjouan regime with the FATF Travel Rule for virtual assets, which brings crypto deposits and withdrawals inside the permit. Worth stating exactly: it is a gaming licence that accommodates crypto settlement, not authorisation to run an exchange or hold customer funds as a wallet.
The practical checks
Four things, in order. Verify the licence on the regulator’s register rather than the site. Check the licensed company name matches the operator named in the terms. Look at whether the operator geo-fences properly — a site that happily accepts a British customer while holding only an offshore permit is telling you something about how it treats every other rule. And read the withdrawal terms before the bonus terms, because that is where operator quality actually shows.
None of this requires legal knowledge. It requires two browser tabs and about three minutes.
Why it is worth the three minutes
Operators that treat a licence as a badge rather than a set of continuing obligations tend to fail in a predictable order: payment processing goes first, the licence second, and customers find out third. The register would have shown it earlier.
For readers who want to understand what sits behind the offshore names — scope, cost, obligations, and the limits — this explainer on the licensing route offshore operators use sets out the current requirements with the date each figure was verified.
