westafrica

Written, not computed

How to check a bookmaker’s licence yourself

The register is public, it is short, and it settles in a minute what an affiliate page cannot settle at all.

Every book on this site holds a licence from the Gaming Commission of Ghana, and the Commission publishes its list of licensed operators. That list is the only thing on the internet that decides the question. A licence number in a website footer is the operator writing about itself, a licence number on an affiliate page is somebody copying that, and neither is the register.

What the register gives you is a trading name, the class of licence, and the dates it runs between. What it does not give you is a licence number. That is worth knowing before you go looking, because it is the reason this site treats "does it publish a licence number" as a question the operator alone can answer, and the reason a number quoted on a review site cannot be verified by anybody.

The class is where the interesting mismatches live. More than one book on this register holds a sports betting licence only while running a full casino, live dealer floor and crash games. That is a difference between what the register records and what the product does, and it is a fact rather than an allegation: the Commission lists what it lists.

Ghana issues its permits annually, which is why a licence number seen in one year and a licence number seen in the next can both be genuine and different. Several brands here have a run of numbers across successive years, and an affiliate page quoting an old one is out of date rather than wrong. The current one, where an operator publishes any, is on its own footer.

One name to be careful with. Lotteries in Ghana sit with the National Lottery Authority rather than with the Gaming Commission, so a lottery product is licensed by a different body and does not appear on the betting register at all.

Questions this raises

Where is the register?
The Gaming Commission of Ghana publishes its list of licensed operators on its own website, and the footer of every page here links to the Commission.
A bookmaker’s footer number does not match the one on a review site. Which is right?
Prefer the operator’s own footer, treat it as dated, and treat any third-party number as unverified. On at least one brand here the operator’s own website and its own store listing print different numbers, and the register carries none to settle it.