Curacao gaming license: what the CGA number on a footer covers

What changed when the LOK came into force

The national ordinance on games of chance, the LOK, replaced the old sub-licence model with a direct one. Offering online games in or from Curacao without a licence became prohibited, and the prohibition reaches any entity that controls the player database or the player transactions, which closes the loophole where a casino ran on a partner's number. Only a legal entity established under Curacao law, with a statutory seat there and at least one resident managing director, can hold the licence.

The regulator changed name with the law: the Gaming Control Board became the Curacao Gaming Authority, the CGA, and its supervision moved from the finance ministry to the justice ministry. A page that still says Gaming Control Board or GCB is describing the previous regime.

Two rules in the ordinance are not yet live. The local substance requirement, the article that asks for real staff and offices on the island, has been postponed by a general extension, so a claim that every licensee now has an office in Willemstad is ahead of the facts. And the licence for suppliers, the studios and platforms, phases in two years after the ordinance took effect.

Why the JAZ master numbers no longer mean anything

Four companies held master licences and rented sub-licences to hundreds of casinos: Gaming Curacao under 365/JAZ, Cyberluck under 1668/JAZ, Antillephone under 8048/JAZ and Curacao Interactive Licensing under 5536/JAZ. All four have expired and the regulator confirmed none would be renewed or extended. The transitional certificate of operation for former sub-licensees, the orange seal, has ended as well: a casino showing an orange seal today is in breach of Curacao law, and only the green seal is permitted.

The live register does not contain the string JAZ or the number 8048 at all. A casino whose footer still prints 8048/JAZ is quoting the number of a company whose licence lapsed, not a licence of its own. Several review sites still print those numbers for brands we cover; the brand pages here print the number from the register instead.

How to read the CGA online gaming licence register

The regulator publishes the register as a PDF with one row per licence and seven columns: licence number, licensee, company type, Curacao company registration number, issued date, expiry date, status. Numbers come in two formats. OGL followed by a year were issued under the interim online gaming policy; CGA followed by a year are issued under the ordinance itself. Both are direct licences.

The status column is the one to read. Indefinite with no expiry is a full licence. Assessment in progress is a provisional one, valid for up to six months with a possible extension of up to six more while the licensee works towards full compliance. Expired and revoked speak for themselves, and most revocations in the register were requested by the licensee. In the edition we read, of 662 numbered rows about 310 were under assessment, about 204 were indefinite, 32 had expired and about 50 were revoked: roughly 510 live licences, of which about four in ten are full ones. A provisional status is normal for the regime and not a warning; a row that rolls forward every six months is why we never print a licence expiry date on a review.

The company type matters too. A casino should map to a B2C row. A B2B number belongs to a platform or a studio and cannot be presented as the casino's own licence.

Numbers from our catalogue

One number can cover many brands: Galaktika N.V. holds one licence for Rox, Jet, Sol, Fresh, 1Go, Beef, Drip, Flagman, Legzo, Lex, Izzi, Starda, Monro, Martin and Gizbo. Action against the licensee would hit every one of them at once.

What the green seal has to show

The dynamic seal is a green box with the letters CGA in white. Clicked, it must open a certificate hosted on cert.cga.cw, a domain owned by the regulator, and the certificate must name the domain you are visiting. The seal is tied to the domains the regulator approved for that licensee, so a company can be licensed and still run domains that are not covered: the regulator's own warning about casinoace.life and three sister sites said exactly that, the licensee Famagousta B.V. was real and the domains were not known to it.

Fake seals are a regulator-acknowledged problem. Public warnings have named the GEM55 family of sites and wagerzcasino.com as unlicensed sites using the CGA logo and seal. Readers also report lookalike certificate domains with a different top-level ending, which the regulator has not confirmed, so treat the general pattern as real and the specific address as unverified. The fake licence guide lists the tells.

Which of our brands hold which status

Riobet holds a direct licence under the ordinance with the certificate issued for riobet.com, and its footer seal resolves on the regulator's domain. Vavada, 1xSlots, Play Fortuna, Bitstarz, Booi, 1Win and Betico carry OGL numbers from the interim policy, and Monro's licensee was among the early companies to move to a direct licence, a year before the orange seal transition ended. Weiss and Betico sit at assessment in progress, which is a provisional licence and not a lapse.

The other direction exists too. Cat Casino's Curacao number is printed as expired in the register, and the brand now cites Anjouan. Cryptoboss, Unlim and Auf shared a licence that the register shows as revoked at the licensee's request, and each now cites Anjouan only. Vodka's certificate reads revoked and the footer moved to Anjouan. Aggregators still display a live Curacao licence for some of these; our review pages print the register status instead, and the regulator guide explains what an Anjouan licence gives a player in place of a Curacao one.

What none of this gives you is a home regulator. A dispute with a Curacao-licensed brand escalates to the authority in Willemstad. The reviews mark trust down for a licence that does not resolve on the register, and the four marks show where each brand lands.