The page the rest of the site rests on
A British licence is a list of activities, and the list is shorter than you think
«Licensed by the UK Gambling Commission» is a sentence that appears at the foot of every British gambling site, and it is the least informative true thing those sites say about themselves. The register behind it does not record a yes; it records a list, and the product you came for is either on that list or it is not.
The sentence at the foot of every British gambling site
"Licensed and regulated by the Gambling Commission" is the least informative true thing a British gambling site says about itself, and it appears, in some form, at the foot of every one of them; the sentence is accurate, it is required, and it answers a question almost nobody was asking, because the interesting question is not whether a company is licensed but what the licence lets it do.
The «register» (a list a public authority keeps and publishes) behind that sentence does not record a yes; it records a company (an account number), a set of trading names, and a list of "entitlements" (named activities, each with its own status and its own start date), and the list is where the information is.
| Entitlement on the register | What it allows | What it does not allow |
|---|---|---|
| Casino (Remote) | Slots, roulette, blackjack, live dealer tables, and the rest of a casino lobby | Bingo rooms, and any kind of betting |
| Bingo (Remote) | Bingo rooms, their side games and the chat rooms that go with them | A casino lobby, unless the casino entitlement is also held |
| General Betting Standard — Real Event (Remote) | Bets on things that happen in the world: football, horses, tennis, an election | Bets on a computer-generated event, which is a separate entitlement |
| General Betting Standard — Virtual Event (Remote) | Bets on a simulated event whose result a random number generator decides | Bets on a real match, however similar the screen looks |
- A fifth entitlement, Remote Gambling Software, licenses the business of supplying the games rather than the business of taking the bets, and several of our holders carry it too.
Four entitlements that matter to a player
A remote operating licence can carry a dozen entitlements, most of which concern the business rather than the customer, and four of them decide what a reader will find when he opens the «lobby». We print all four on every operator card on this site, and the pattern across our six «licence holders» is the argument for doing so.
The casino entitlement is the broadest and the most commonly held: it covers slots, roulette, blackjack, baccarat, the «live dealer» tables and the instant-win games, and every holder on this site has it. The bingo entitlement is separate, four of our twenty-four brands lack it, and a brand without it may not run a bingo room however much its lobby looks like one.
Betting splits in two, and the split is the one most often missed. "General Betting Standard — Real Event" covers a wager on something happening in the world, while "General Betting Standard — Virtual Event" covers a wager on a match a «random number generator» decides, and holding one tells you nothing at all about the other.
The case that made us build the site this way
A bingo comparison site we read was listing three brands beside the bingo halls, and all three were genuinely licensed: one company, account 38620, in good standing, no enforcement history. The entitlement on that licence reads "Casino (Remote)" and nothing else, which means those three brands may not sell bingo to anybody in Great Britain.
Nothing on the brands' own pages said so, nothing on the comparison site said so, and the only place the fact existed was a line on a public register that takes a minute to search. That is the whole argument for the column, and it is why the column goes on every card here rather than in a guide somewhere.
How to read the register yourself, in about a minute
The Commission's «public register» takes a company name, a trading name or an account number, and the account number is by far the most reliable of the three, because trading names are declared by the «licensee» and are sometimes written there in a form nobody else uses. One of our brands is filed under a spelling that a search for its own name does not find!
Search the number, open the licence, and the activities are listed one to a line with a status beside each. "Active" means what it says. A date against an entitlement tells you when the company gained it, which is occasionally the most interesting thing on the page, as it was for the three brands that gained a virtual-event entitlement on the first of October 2026.
A search that returns nothing is not proof of absence, and this is where readers go wrong. It usually means the name is filed differently, so the next step is to search the company rather than the brand, and only a search that fails on both is evidence of anything.
A licence with casino, bingo and real-event betting on it
Videoslots
Gambling Commission, account 39380 ·Videoslots Limited
Open VideoslotsCommercial link · 18+ · the operator's terms apply
What a licence does not tell you
Having set out what the list is worth, we should be equally plain about its limits, because a site that oversells a public register is making the same mistake as a site that oversells a rating. An entitlement says an activity is permitted. It says nothing about whether the company is any good at it.
It does not tell you how fast a withdrawal is paid, how a complaint is handled, how aggressive the marketing will be, or whether the terms attached to an offer are reasonable. Those are matters of conduct rather than permission, and the only public record of conduct is the Commission's enforcement history, which is published against the company and is worth reading for any holder you are about to deposit with.
The licence also says nothing about the games themselves. Every slot on every site here comes from a studio licensed separately (under the remote gambling software entitlement), and the return figures, the volatility and the stake limits belong to that layer rather than to the operator's.
Questions readers ask
Where exactly do I find the Gambling Commission's register?
At registers.gamblingcommission.gov.uk, which is free, needs no account and takes a company name, a trading name or an account number. We print the account number on every card for that reason: it is the one of the three that always finds the right record.
Does a licence mean my money is protected if the operator fails?
Not automatically, and this is one of the most misunderstood points in British gambling. Operators are required to hold customer funds separately and to tell you, in their terms, what level of protection applies, and the levels range from "basic" to "high". The licence requires the disclosure rather than a particular outcome.
What is the difference between a real event and a virtual event?
A real event happens in the world and a virtual one is generated by software, usually to look like a football match or a horse race. They sit on separate entitlements with separate names, and an operator can hold either without the other, which is exactly what has happened to three brands on this site.
If a brand is not on the register at all, what does that mean?
First, that the name may be filed differently, so search the company rather than the brand before concluding anything. If neither search finds it, the site is not licensed to take bets from people in Great Britain, which means it is committing an offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act and is outside every protection described on these pages.
By the UK Pound Casino editorial team · Last updated November 2026 · Online since 2026
