The public register, and what it is evidence of

Great Britain's gambling regulator publishes its entire licensing database as four downloadable files: businesses, licences, trading names and domain names. On 1 September 2026 they held 2,650 businesses, 4,504 licence records, 2,433 trading names and 2,243 declared domains. Anybody can download them and check any claim an operator makes about its own licensing.

A register exists so that permission is a public fact rather than a private assurance. An operator telling you it is licensed is a claim by an interested party; the same statement appearing in the regulator's own file is a record the regulator would have to correct if it were wrong. The two are not the same kind of evidence and it is worth knowing which one you are looking at.

It is evidence of permission, not of behaviour. The register records that a company is allowed to take a bet in Great Britain; it records nothing about pricing, payout speed, how limits are applied, or how the company behaves when somebody wins. Those are separate questions and the register does not answer any of them.

Here is the catch. A licence gets treated as a recommendation. It is a floor, and the floor is low by design: 2,650 businesses hold one. Being on the register distinguishes an operator from the ones that are not on it, and from nothing else.

What to do with it. Download the file yourself once, so you know what it looks like. Every future claim about who is licensed becomes a search rather than a matter of trust.