In order for online gambling to be successful, it is important that there is trust between the players and the casino. This is true in the land-based casino world too because players have to be certain that someone is looking after them and they are not being cheated.
However, when it comes to Internet gambling, it is a lot trickier for players to be confident about the integrity of any games that they play since they cannot see how the game results are being determined.
This is why gambling regulators are now so important because it is them that make sure that all games at an online casino are random, fair, and safe. In this article, we shall look at some of the best gambling regulators out there at the moment.
Spelinspektionen
The Swedish Gambling Authority, known locally as the Spelinspektionen, is the company that responsible for making sure that the Swedish gambling and gaming market is safe, legal, and reliable. The Ministry of Finance are in control of them, and the board is chosen by the Government.
They have a number of missions to achieve, and these include to provide Swedish consumers with all the tools that they need to experience fair gaming, doing their best to continue working towards a safe and sound gaming market, and to try and decrease the amount of illegal gambling operations. They are also the ones that are responsible for granting permits for gaming machines, national lotteries, bingo halls, and restaurant casinos.
Although it is not illegal to play at unlicensed casinos in Sweden, we strongly recommend that Swedish players only play at those casinos that are able to display a license from the Spelinspektionen. An easy way to find out whether a casino has been licensed or not is to make use of guides such as svenskaonlinecasino.info.
United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC)
Established thanks to the 2005 Gambling Act, the United Kingdom Gambling Commission took over from what was known as the Gaming Board for Great Britain back in 2007. It is responsible for regulating most types of betting in Britain, although this does not include sports betting. As part of their duties, the United Kingdom Gambling Commission oversees remote gambling, which also includes licensing online gaming websites.
While acquiring a license from this gambling regulator has always been sought-after, it has become even more so since the passing of the License and Advertising Bill. This legislation was not only responsible for introducing point-of-consumption tax for remote gambling in Britain, but it also required companies that wanted to accept bets from British customers to be licensed by the United Kingdom Gambling Commission.
This, it is safe to say, has been very controversial, with a number of companies deciding to abandon the British market instead of complying because it would mean that they would be required to give up grey market operations to get a UK license. This has not really impacted the British gambling scene though as British casino players still have plenty of online casinos and sportsbooks available to them.
Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ)
The Autorité Nationale des Jeux, which is more commonly known as ANJ, is an administrative authority that came into being in June 2020 to regulate everything to do with French online Gambling. The ANJ have a number of jobs that they have to carry out and this includes issuing approvals and ensuring that operators remain compliant, protecting the vulnerable and making sure that they do not become addicted, ensuring the fairness and safety of gambling operations, fighting against money laundering and fraud, and fighting against illegal sites.
At the moment in time, only operators that offer horse racing betting, sportsbooks betting, and poker games are able to get a license from the ANJ. If you go on their website, then you can find a listed of operators that they have approved and links to their sites. Also, they have a section on their site where you can see all the approvals and rejections that they have made.
They contacted unlicensed gambling sites that accept French players and requested that they no longer do so, and this was their first step towards completely banning those websites that did not get approval from the ANJ and were operating without any license. Then they focussed on blocking the access to such sites rather than trying to prosecute operators that are based overseas. They turned to the French ISPs to ask them to block unlicensed sites, and after a bit of reluctance they agreed to do so after the Tribunal de Grande instance de Paris declared that they must act to stop French gamblers from accessing such sites.
Malta Gaming Authority (MGA)
Malta is seen by many as a small tourist destination in the Mediterranean Sea that is a great place to go for a sunny holiday. However, as well as this, it has also become a bit of an iGaming hub thanks to the fact that gambling companies can pay less taxes by setting up shop here and that those who are based in Malta can take bets from near enough any other country in the world. The body that is in charge of regulating the gambling scene in Malta is known as the Malta Gaming Authority.
If you know something about the iGaming scene in Malta, then you might recall that the Malta Gaming Authority was once called the Lotteries and Gaming Authority. They changed their name back in 2015, after a number of significant changes were made when the LGA were criticised about how they had gone about handling problems at a number of casino sites, with the most notable one being the Everleaf Network. While these incidents did hurt player trust in the LGA, the Maltese authorities have put in a lot of hard work to rebuild this trust over the years, and now the MGA is one of the most respected regulating bodies in Europe.
It also now considered to be one of the strictest gambling regulators in the world, so players trust them fully because they know that their rights are fully protected and that their security is a priority.