The legal section

The Act, and the two sections that decide everything else

The Gambling Act 2005 replaced a statute from 1968 and did three things: it created the Gambling Commission, it set out three objectives every licence condition has to serve, and it made the provision of gambling without a licence a criminal offence.

What the Act replaced, and what it was for

The Gambling Act 2005 came into force in September 2007 and replaced a framework assembled from the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963 and the Gaming Act 1968, which between them had been written for a world of licensed betting shops and members' clubs; the change of principle was that gambling stopped being something the law tolerated under conditions and became something the law licensed and supervised.

The Act did three structural things. It created the Gambling Commission as a single regulator, it made providing facilities for gambling without a licence a criminal offence, and it set out three "licensing objectives" against which every subsequent condition has to be justified.

Section 33, and what makes a site unlawful

Section 33 makes it an offence to provide facilities for gambling without an operating licence, and it is the provision that separates an unlicensed site from a merely unregulated one. The distinction matters because readers often describe an «offshore» (licensed somewhere other than where the player sits) operator as working in a "grey area", and in Great Britain there is no grey area: either the company holds a licence or it is committing an offence by taking the bet.

The penalties run to a fine, imprisonment or both, and the Commission's practical tools are more administrative than criminal. It issues cease-and-desist notices, asks search engines to remove results for unlawful sites, and reviews the licences of suppliers found to be serving unlicensed operators, which it did in December 2024 and again in October 2025. What it has not had, as at November 2025, is a direct power to order the blocking of a website or a payment, and that is what the Crime and Policing Bill would change, and the Bill was still before the Lords at that date!

Section 36, which brought the offshore market inside

Until 2014 an operator licensed in Gibraltar or Malta could take bets from British customers without a British licence, because the Act's original test looked at where the equipment was rather than where the customer was, and the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 changed the test to the place of use, and the consequence is the market this site describes.

Section 36 now requires a licence wherever the facilities are used in Great Britain, or where remote gambling equipment is located here. An operator that blocks British customers entirely needs no licence and may lawfully exist; an operator that accepts one needs a licence for all of them. That is the mechanism behind an enforcement story the trade followed closely, in which a large «offshore» (licensed somewhere other than where the player sits) brand restricted access from Great Britain and thereby removed itself from the section's reach, with the result that sponsorship of it was no longer an offence under section 330.

Section 330, and the offence a comparison site can commit

Section 330 makes it an offence to advertise unlawful gambling, and section 327 defines advertising broadly enough that a «comparison site» is plainly inside it. Advertising includes taking steps to encourage somebody to use gambling facilities, bringing those facilities or information about them to somebody's attention with a view to increasing their use, and participating in an activity you know is designed to do either.

The offence is committed by "a person", which is to say by whoever does the advertising rather than only by the operator. The Commission has written to football clubs about sponsorship arrangements with unlicensed operators on exactly this basis, and the same reasoning reaches an «affiliate» (a publisher paid for the account rather than for the advertisement), and this is the section that governs the shape of this site. The commercial pages carry only licensed operators, and the pages written for countries whose law forbids the advertising carry no operator at all, which is a design decision taken from a statute rather than from caution.

Questions readers ask

When did the Gambling Act 2005 actually come into force?

The main provisions commenced on 1 September 2007, almost two years after Royal Assent, because the licensing system had to be built first. The remote licensing regime as it works today dates from 2014, when the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act changed the territorial test.

What are the licensing objectives, and do they matter to a player?

They are the three purposes every licence condition has to serve: preventing crime, ensuring fairness and openness, and protecting children and vulnerable people. They matter because they are the test a new rule has to pass, and because an operator in breach of a condition is in breach of something traceable to one of the three.

Is an offshore casino a grey area in Britain?

No. Section 33 makes providing facilities for gambling without an operating licence a criminal offence, and section 36 makes the licence necessary wherever the facilities are used in Great Britain. A site that takes British customers without a licence is unlawful, not unregulated.

Can I be prosecuted under section 330 for linking to a casino?

The offence is committed by whoever advertises unlawful gambling, and advertising is defined widely in section 327. Linking to a licensed operator is not within it. Linking to an unlicensed one, with a view to increasing use of its facilities, plainly could be, which is why this site carries no unlicensed operator anywhere.

By the UK Pound Casino editorial team · Last updated November 2026 · Online since 2026