An MGA licence check takes four of the regulator's own tools, and on 11 November 2026 they didn't always agree. The Malta Gaming Authority's Licensee Register listed 312 authorisations as "Licensed". Its URL Checker said "URL not found in Licensee database" for betfair.com, while two of its dynamic seal pages list http://www.betfair.com among their websites. So check the company, the domain and the seal separately, and trust the seal page most.010203
This guide walks through the check step by step, with what each tool showed that morning. Malta is one of the licensing bodies on our regulators hub. For what a licence is in general, see what is a gaming licence; for the offshore registers, see our Curaçao licence check and Anjouan licence check.0102030405
The MGA tools and what each one answers
Tool | What it answers | What it missed on 11 November 2026 |
|---|---|---|
Licensee Register (mgalicenseeregister.mga.org.mt) | Which company holds which authorisation, and its status | Companies covered by another company's licence don't get their own row; the status filters missed three entries |
URL Checker (mgaurlchecker.mga.org.mt) | Whether a website address is tied to a licensee | betfair.com returned nothing; a bare domain such as williamhill.com returned "not found" where https://www.williamhill.com returned "Success!" |
Dynamic seal page (authorisation.mga.org.mt) | Licence number, type, status, approved games, dispute body and website list for one company | Nothing we could find; it is the most complete record |
Enforcement Register and Unauthorised URLs | Suspensions, cancellations, and sites falsely claiming an MGA licence | Covers only what the MGA has acted on or spotted |
Step 1: read the licence number and the company on the site
An MGA licensee should name itself on its site. The regulator's FAQs list what a licensed operator "must display on their website", starting with "The Licensee details" and including "A dynamic seal or kite mark". Note the company name and the number.06
MGA numbers look like MGA/B2C/1112/2025 or MGA/CRP/130/2006. In the register's full list on 11 November 2026, 159 of 316 entries began MGA/B2B, 109 MGA/B2C and 48 MGA/CRP. B2B is the "Critical Supply Licence" for suppliers such as game studios; it doesn't let a company take bets from you. B2C is the "Gaming Service Licence" for sites that deal with players. A CRP number can be either: Betway Limited's MGA/CRP/130/2006 is shown on its seal page as "B2C - Gaming Service Licence", and Playtech P.L.C.'s MGA/CRP/137/2007 as "B2B - Critical Supply Licence". The licence type on the seal page decides, not the prefix.0103
A number can also carry a suffix. William Hill Global PLC's seal page shows MGA/CRP/121/2006-05, and Betfair International PLC's shows MGA/CRP/131/2006-02. In the cases we opened, the suffix marked a company covered by another company's licence. Keep it: it matters in step 2.03
Step 2: search the Licensee Register by company
The register lets you search, in the MGA's words, "by licensee name, authorisation status, URL or Gaming Service", though on 11 November 2026 the register page offered fields for name, status and gaming service; the URL search sits in the separate URL Checker. Each result shows the company name, its company registration number, the authorisation number and the game types. Open a result and it adds the status, registered address, a "Termination Date" field and a link to the company's seal.01
What the register held on 11 November 2026, by status filter:
Licensed: 312 authorisations.
Surrendered: 184.
Cancelled: 66.
Expired: 6.
Suspended: 1, Condor Malta Limited.
Voluntary Suspended: none.
The filters don't catch everything. The "View All" button returned 316 entries: the 312 "Licensed" ones, Condor Malta Limited, and three more that no status filter returned. When we opened those three, Phoenix International Limited read "Suspended", and P2P Entertainment Limited and Palasino Malta Limited read "Voluntary Suspended". So open the record itself and read its status line; don't rely on a filtered list. The "Termination Date" field isn't reliable either: it read "N/A" on every record we opened, including Bimbabet Limited, whose status was "Cancelled".01
Companies that share a licence don't get their own row. William Hill Malta PLC and William Hill Global PLC aren't among the 316 entries; their seal pages give their licences as MGA/CRP/121/2006-02 and -05, and the plain MGA/CRP/121/2006 belongs to Mr Green Limited. Their names are in the search list, but picking one returns the base licence holder: "William Hill Malta PLC" returned Mr Green Limited, and "Betfair International PLC" returned PPB Counterparty Services Limited (MGA/CRP/131/2006). So if the result shows a different company from the one on your site, that is expected; go to the seal and find your company there.0103
The game types are defined in the MGA's FAQs. Type 1 covers "casino-type games (including roulette, blackjack, baccarat, and virtual sports games)"; Type 2 is betting where "the operator manages his or her own risk by managing the odds offered to the player"; Type 3 covers "player versus player games such as poker, bingo, betting exchange"; Type 4 is "controlled skill games". A company approved only for Type 2 isn't approved for casino-type games.06
Step 3: run the domain through the URL Checker
The URL Checker asks you to "Verify if an online gaming site is licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority by entering the URL below." It answers "Success! URL found in Licensee database." or "URL not found in Licensee database.", sometimes followed by "Closest matches".02
Treat its answer as a lead, not a verdict. How you type the address changes the answer. On 11 November 2026, williamhill.com, bet365.com and betway.com each returned "URL not found", with the operator's own address listed under closest matches; typed as https://www.williamhill.com and so on, each returned "Success!". Reload the page before every new search, too: after "Back to Search" the checker sometimes kept showing the previous query's results, which is how a first pass of ours recorded a "Success!" for a bare domain. For betfair.com it found nothing in any of the four forms we tried (betfair.com, www.betfair.com, http://www.betfair.com and https://www.betfair.com), although the seal pages of PPB Counterparty Services Limited and Betfair International PLC both list http://www.betfair.com. And a "Success!" doesn't tell you the licence is active: the company must also read "Licensed" in step 2 and on its seal.020301
Read the closest matches with care. Sometimes they are the operator's own address in another form; often they are other companies' addresses that share a few letters with yours. On 11 November 2026, pinnacle.com returned http://pinnacle.bet under PinBet Malta Limited, and thrill.com returned http://www.thrills.com under GIPS Limited. Neither is the site we asked about.02
Step 4: open the dynamic seal and read the whole page
The seal page is where the MGA puts everything together. Click the seal on the casino's site, or the "Click to View" link next to the company in the register. Betway Limited's seal page on 11 November 2026 showed:0301
the licence MGA/CRP/130/2006, "B2C - Gaming Service Licence", status "Licensed";
approved game types (Type 1 and Type 2) and the game suppliers approved for each;
its approved dispute body: "eCogra";
four website addresses, http://www.betway.com, https://www.betway.ie, https://betwayarabia1.com and http://www.hippodromeonline.com.
Check three things on it. First, the address bar: the page itself says "For authenticity, make sure that the address of this website starts with https://authorisation.mga.org.mt If not report misuse." A seal image that opens anything else is a copy. Second, the company list: the first seal screen can list several companies, seven for the seal behind PPB Counterparty Services Limited, from Betfair Casino Limited to PPB GE Limited, so pick the one your site names. Third, the website list: your exact domain should be on it. A seal shows status too. Condor Malta Limited's seal read "Suspended" on 11 November 2026, with ten website addresses still listed under it.03
Step 5: check the enforcement register and the unauthorised list
The MGA publishes its sanctions in an Enforcement Register. On 11 November 2026 it held 163 dated notices from 2013 to 2026, two of them from 2026. One is the suspension of Condor Malta Limited's licence MGA/B2C/340/2016, "effective as of 16 September 2026"; the notice says the company "is thus no longer authorised to carry out any gaming operations, but is required to retain and provide access to all registered players to their player accounts for visibility purposes." The other is the cancellation of Winzon Group Limited's authorisation MGA/B2C/717/2019, which directs the company to "Refund all player monies to the legitimate players".04
The second list is of sites that use the MGA's name without a licence. The regulator says it "has no connection with the below listed URLs" and that any reference to an MGA licence on them "is false and misleading". On 11 November 2026 the page listed 319 addresses with notice dates from 23 August 2006 to 30 October 2026, 53 of them dated 2026. If the site you're on is there, the MGA has already said the licence claim isn't real.05
What we found for the 76 operators BullsRank tracks
None of the 76 operators we track has an MGA licence in our licence records; of the 72 licence records in force, 39 are from Anjouan, 21 from Curaçao, 7 from the UK Gambling Commission and 5 from three other regulators. To see whether the MGA connects any of them, we ran each operator's main domain through the URL Checker on 11 November 2026, reloading the page for every search, in two forms: the bare domain and https://www.0802
Result (address typed as https://www.) | Operators | Examples |
|---|---|---|
"Success!" | 3 | bet365.com (Hillside (Gaming) ENC and Hillside (Sports) ENC), betway.com (Betway Limited), williamhill.com (William Hill Malta PLC and William Hill Global PLC) |
Not found, with other sites as closest matches | 14 | pinnacle.com, stake.com, thrill.com, unibet.co.uk |
Not found, nothing listed | 59 | betfair.com, ladbrokes.com, midnite.com, cloudbet.com, gamdom.com |
Typed as bare domains, the same three returned "URL not found" with their own addresses under closest matches; the other 73 got the same answer in both forms. All three are brands whose UK licence we already record, and the headline status on each matched company's seal page read "Licensed". Our profiles of Bet365, Betway and William Hill record their UK Gambling Commission licences; the MGA records aren't on them yet. Betway's own terms, in our record read 22 September 2026, name "Betway Limited (C39710), a Maltese registered company"; the register lists Betway Limited with registration number C39710 and authorisation MGA/CRP/130/2006.02030801
The unibet.co.uk result shows why the exact address matters. The checker's closest matches listed Unibet addresses for other markets, such as https://www.unibet.mt/ and https://fi.unibet.com under Kserol P.L.C., but not the UK site. A brand can be MGA-licensed in one market and served by a different licence in yours.02
What an MGA licence gives you if something goes wrong
Complain to the operator first. The MGA's FAQs say a licensee must "immediately inquire into the complaint" and tell you the result "within ten days", extendable by ten more if it explains why. If that fails, you can take it to the MGA's Player Support Unit or to the operator's dispute body. The FAQs say MGA operators "are required to engage an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) entity" and, if the ADR decides for the player, "the Operator has 20 days in which to comply". The seal page names the ADR: eCogra for Betway Limited and both Hillside companies on 11 November 2026. Our guide to eCOGRA's seal and ADR covers that route.0603
The MGA's complaint form asks for the website URL, the operator's name, your username, the disputed amount and the date. It accepts cases "in English or Maltese" and recommends that you "actively seek to resolve your dispute directly with the operator's support and management" first.07
What the check can and can't settle
Done in full, the check tells you which company holds an MGA authorisation, what kind it is, whether it reads "Licensed" today, and whether the seal page lists the site you're on. That last point decides it: a licence that doesn't list your domain doesn't cover the site in front of you.010203
It won't tell you the licence covers your country; the seal lists websites, not markets. The register's filters and the URL Checker can each miss a record, so a "not found" from either is a reason to keep looking, not a conclusion. And a licence is a fact about who is registered where, not a rating of how a casino treats players. For the other licences we check, see the Kahnawake and Tobique guide.030102
Method
We read the MGA Licensee Register in a web browser on 11 November 2026 between 09:58 and 10:13 UTC; the page showed "Last Updated: 11/11/2026 10:52" (Malta time, UTC+1). We listed all 316 entries behind "View All" (company, registration number, authorisation number, game types), counted each status filter, and opened the record of every entry outside the "Licensed" filter. We ran the 76 main domains of the operators we track through the URL Checker between 10:42 and 10:47 UTC, each as a bare domain and with https://www., loading the page afresh for every search. A first pass at 10:07–10:15 UTC used the "Back to Search" button and gave the same split by the https://www. form, but some bare-domain answers there were left over from the previous query, so we report the fresh run. Seal pages were downloaded on the same morning. The enforcement register, the unauthorised-URL page, the FAQs and the complaint page were downloaded at 09:57–10:09 UTC and are quoted verbatim. The operator list and licence records come from the BullsRank database, read at 10:05 UTC.
