Welcome to MGA Casino List. As the name suggests, we list online casinos that are licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority aka MGA.
Malta was the first European country to regulate online gaming. The MGA was established in 2001 and since then, the online gambling sector in Malta has grown a lot. Nowadays contributing to over 10 percent of the country’s GDP.
About MGA Casinos: Who can play
Since Malta’s gaming authority is in Europe, the MGA casinos are open to all Europeans. And compared to offshore jurisdictions outside Europe, Malta has one strong advantage. Tax-free winnings.
But depending on where you are located, you might not be able to play on the best MGA casinos. Or at least the best-known MGA casinos.
This is because there are nowadays more and more countries in Europe that have regulated online gambling. Well, more than countries that would have not regulated online gambling yet.
So if you’re located in Sweden or Denmark for example, you are not able to get the bonuses from Unibet that are available to Maltese players. This is because the country itself has regulated gaming and Unibet has a valid license in Sweden, yes, while the site itself looks similar or the same, it isn’t technically the same site.
New MGA casinos: Free for all
New MGA-licensed casinos regularly pop onto the market and they, of course, offer new welcome bonuses that you can claim. Usually, the first deposit bonus is the best bonus available and it can only be claimed once. When you make your first deposit at MGA casinos. Of course, some of the MGA casinos might even offer a no deposit bonus – bonus that you receive after registration (typically free spins).
Since new MGA casinos generally don’t have any other license than the MGA license, most people in the world can play at these casinos. Casinos with several other licenses usually use some sort GEO detection to see, where you are entering their website. And then automatically change the interface to the correct jurisdiction.
Playing on these new MGA casinos for you, the player is completely ok. Since you are free to choose where in the internet you take your business. The responsibility is on the online casinos themselves to ensure, that they are allowed to accept players from the country you are accessing their website. But a word of warning here.
To be assured that you are able to play, do send the KYC documents in advance and verify your casino account. If all is good, then you should be able to play at the MGA online casino that you chose from our MGA casino list.
Why is that you may ask? Well because were aware that several online casinos, some from the MGA casino list, might refuse to payout winnings if you have entered the online casino from an unsupported country. So double-check, just to be sure.
Is a license from the Malta Gaming Authority hard to get?
It isn’t the hardest one to obtain, but not the easiest one either. Licenses from strongly regulated jurisdictions like Spain require more capital. A few million euros to be exact. So compared to these, the Malta Gaming Authority license is for sure easier to obtain. But there are other licenses that are easier.
Offshore licenses from let’s say, banana republics, are much easier to get than the MGA license. To get a license from Curacao, all you need is some cash. But there aren’t nearly as many things to consider as in Malta. Neither the process takes that long either.
Not to say that Curacao-licensed online casinos would automatically be bad. The license offers an easy way to enter the gaming market and better licenses can, of course, be obtained later. But when it comes to hot topics like responsible gambling and money laundering, offshore licenses outside Europe don’t really have a great reputation. Not that the authorities there would require much from the gaming companies either.
Sigma in Malta: Where MGA casinos are on display
Sigma is a large gaming conference held every year in Malta, where the conference originally started. Nowadays Sigma conferences have become worldwide, but they still have one conference every year in Malta. And obviously, MGA licensed casinos are there on display.
Not necessarily in a fancy way, if it is a relatively new MGA casino. But generally, they are still present. So if you’re interested about the gaming industry and the MGA licensed casinos especially, that is one of the gaming conferences to visit, for sure.