Readers connecting from the United Kingdom see this page in place of every Rand Casinos page that presents operators. The reason is the law of Great Britain, where an operator needs a licence from the Gambling Commission before it may offer gambling to anyone there, wherever its offices or its servers stand, and where the Gambling Act 2005 makes it an offence to advertise "unlawful gambling" (section 330). That rule has no exception for sites based abroad.
The casinos described on the rest of our site are presented through their international sites, licensed in Malta, Alderney, Gibraltar, Kahnawake or elsewhere, and a licence from one of those authorities authorises nothing in Great Britain. Some of the same groups run separate British sites (under a licence of the Commission), but our links do not lead to them, so we present no operator here at all. This page lists no operators and no links to their sites; it explains how to recognise a licensed operator, what "self-exclusion" is and where to find help.
The law in Great Britain
The Gambling Commission licenses and supervises the companies that serve players in England, Scotland and Wales. Since a law of 2014 its licence is required of any operator whose games are used in Great Britain, so a casino licensed abroad must hold a British licence as well before it can take a British player's stake, and that licence brings the Commission's rules with it: identity and age checks before the first deposit, rules on "safer gambling" and on bonuses, and a complaints route that runs from the operator to a free "ADR" provider (alternative dispute resolution) once eight weeks have passed.
The Act covers Great Britain and not Northern Ireland, where gambling is a devolved matter with laws of its own. The site recognises countries rather than the parts of a country, so this page is shown to readers from every part of the United Kingdom, and the national self-exclusion scheme described below is, in any case, open to anyone living there.
How to recognise a licensed operator
The Commission's public register of businesses can be searched by business name, by "trading name", by "domain name" or by account number, and for every licence it shows a status ("active", "suspended" or "revoked", among others). In our view the check that matters is the one on the domain: the address in your browser should appear among the domains of an account whose licence is active, because a licence number printed in a footer (or a "seal" that links nowhere) proves nothing by itself. Only the register settles it.
The register also shows the regulatory action that the Commission has recently taken against a business, so you can see before opening an account whether the company behind a site has been sanctioned. We would advise starting from the register rather than from any review, ours included!
Self-exclusion
GAMSTOP, the national online self-exclusion scheme run by The National Online Self Exclusion Scheme Limited, lets anyone living in the United Kingdom exclude themselves, free of charge, from the online gambling companies licensed in Great Britain, for 6 months, 1 year or 5 years, the last also with automatic renewal (gamstop.co.uk). It works only on the companies that the Commission licenses; a site licensed elsewhere is outside it, and blocking software on the device (which our responsible gambling page describes) is the tool that covers that gap.
Where to find help
The National Gambling Helpline, run by GamCare, answers on 0808 8020 133, by live chat and on WhatsApp at the same number, 24 hours a day, every day, and the call costs nothing. Gambling in Great Britain is for adults aged 18 or over, and a licensed operator must verify a customer's age and identity before that customer can deposit or gamble.
The privacy policy explains how the site recognises the country from which you connect, and what it keeps of it (nothing, for this purpose).
Questions
Is a casino licensed in Malta legal for players in Great Britain?
Not by that licence alone: an operator that serves players in Great Britain needs a licence from the Gambling Commission, and it is the British site of a group that holds it.
How can you check that a gambling site is licensed in Great Britain?
Search the Gambling Commission's public register for the site's domain name and check that the account shows an active licence; a seal or a number in the footer is not proof.
How does GAMSTOP work?
It is free and open to anyone living in the United Kingdom, and it excludes the registered person from the online gambling companies licensed in Great Britain for 6 months, 1 year or 5 years.