UK Gambling Commission Review

What Is the UK Gambling Commission?

Gambling and online gambling is legal in the United Kingdom, but it is heavily regulated. Simply put, you need a “license” if you want to be a gambling operator in the UK. The institution that gives this license is known as the UK Gambling Commission. It operates under the National Gambling Act 2005 and has two functions:

• Regulating the National Lottery
• Regulating the online gambling operators.

Let’s say you want to open a casino that accepts gamblers from the UK as members. As the operator, you must get this license in order to do that. If you accept members from the UK without this license:

• You won’t be able to accept payments within the United Kingdom banking system
• Some legal sanctions, including imprisonment, can be applied to you.

The distinction of the UKGC license is that it forces casino owners to operate in the United Kingdom. Your servers and company must be physically located in the UK. This is not mandatory for almost all other licenses: You can set up shop in a random country and still get a Panama license, for example. However, your company and servers must be located in the United Kingdom if you want to obtain the  UKGC license.

Applying for a license is not hard at all: You can do it even online. However, the rest of the procedure is long, bureaucratic, and complex. There are lots of different types of licenses, but the online casino operators usually apply only for the “remote gambling license”. The application fee alone can be as high as 14.647 GBP, and the annual fees are even higher: They can go as high as 49.219 GBP per year. So, yes, you must already own a successful and big company to cover these costs.

Each application is reviewed carefully. If you have a criminal record in your past and/or tax debt, you won’t be getting this license. You really need to have a “flawless” financial and personal background if you want to own a UK Gambling Commission license.

Why Choose UKGC?

First of all, it gives you an amazing reputation. Online casinos that own this license are rare, and they all are reliable places. Customers prefer trustable places to gamble, and a UKGC license means that you can trust that place. In addition, there are a lot of gamblers in the United Kingdom, which means a lot of potential profit. To be able to serve them and enter the market, you must own this license.

From a customer point of view, it is best to gamble in a website that owns a UKGC license. This is because you will know that that place is safe, secure, and heavily regulated. If something goes wrong, you can be sure that the owners are located in the same country as yourself and legally responsible. The government knows who they are and you can pursue legal actions, if necessary. Moreover, you can use your local currency (GBP) in those casinos and do not suffer from a financial loss due to exchange rates. However, reliability is the foremost and most important reason: Once more, you can trust UK Gambling Commission casinos.

Responsible Gaming and Player Protection with UK Gambling Commission

These are separate issues, so we will examine both separately.

Player Protection

As a player, you have many consumer rights while gambling in UK Gambling Commission casinos. Two of these are especially important: The right to get fair promotions and the right to get easy-to-understand, transparent communication. An online casino licensed by the UKGC must offer fair bonuses. This means the wagering requirements must have fair multipliers and the bonuses must be really obtainable by anyone. So, if a casino offers a 600% first deposit bonus, for example, and asks for a 75X wagering requirement, this is not a fair offer. And if this situation is not explained to the customer in an easy-to-understand language, this means another penalty for the casino. The sanction of not complying with these obligations is more substantial than you think: In May 2018, UKGC issued a fine of 600.000 GBP to Leo Vegas because of a “hard-to-understand” bonus promotion.

Contrary to popular belief, the UK Gambling Commission does not act as a complaint resolution service. Customers cannot apply directly to UKGC for their complaints about casinos. However, UKGC can approve and assign Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) services. So they have the authority to create a complaint resolution service and audit it.

Responsible Gaming

Responsible gaming is a series of practices that all casinos must apply. This is an obligation for casinos, not the players. A casino licensed by UK Gambling Commission must offer responsible gaming practices to all of its customers. These include (But not limited to) self-limiting the play time, the budget, and games. For example, a customer must be able to limit his play time or the budget he can spend on gambling. The casino must offer services that allow all of these to be done. Once more, this is a serious obligation than you think. In June 2018, UK Gaming Commission issued a fine of 2.000.000 GBP to 32Red. This was because 32Red failed to apply responsible gaming practices to a particular client of them. Due to this failure, that client deposited more than 750.000 GBP to the casino and went bankrupt. So, yes, UK Gambling Commission casinos must research the financial background of their customers and limit their budgets accordingly, if needed.