In May 2026, GAMSTOP took 12,236 new registrations, which it reported as a record month. When the national online self-exclusion service published its half-year figures on 16 July, 614,738 people were excluded through Gamstop Online, and more than one in two of them had chosen the longest term on offer, five years. Only one in four had picked six months.
Behind each of those registrations sits a decision made on a particular day, often long before this year’s casino brands had names. GAMSTOP’s report for Self-Exclusion Day in September showed how closely those decisions follow ordinary life: sign-ups fell while England were playing at the World Cup this summer and rose again once the matches were over.
A site that launched this autumn has never dealt with any of those people, yet its sign-up form has to turn every one of them away. That is the first thing worth knowing about a new site in Great Britain. The other checks before typing in a name and date of birth follow on from it: whether the licence is real and belongs to the address in the browser, which company stands behind the fresh brand, and what the deposit-limit screen will ask you to decide.
A Block Registered Before the Site Existed Still Applies
On 14 January 2020 the Gambling Commission told every online operator that, by 31 March that year, it would have to take part in the multi-operator self-exclusion scheme, GAMSTOP. The duty sits in social responsibility code 3.5.5, and social responsibility codes carry the force of a licence condition. Its wording is short: licensees must participate in the national multi-operator self-exclusion scheme. Nothing in it exempts a business that arrives later.
The Commission enforced the date within days. On 3 April 2020 it suspended the licences of two online operators, Dynamic, which traded as Prophet, and Sportito, because neither had fully integrated the scheme in time. Sportito’s suspension was lifted once its integration was finished, and Dynamic’s a few days later. Every operator licensed since then has entered the market with the same condition attached to its licence from day one.
The way the check works explains why the age of a brand is beside the point. GAMSTOP says gambling operators check with it whenever anyone tries to use an online gambling account, and it replies when that person is on its register so the operator can block them. The exclusion belongs to the person, not to a list of websites. A registration made in 2023 meets a brand created in 2026 on the same terms as it meets the oldest names in British betting.
Whether that holds for brand-new sites is the first question in the FAQ at the foot of gambling.com’s UK page about choosing a new casino online. The page answers yes: every UKGC-licensed casino must take part in GamStop, and someone registered with the scheme should be blocked from licensed UK casino sites, new operators included.
That answer turns on the word registered, and GAMSTOP’s own rules give the word a long reach. A registration cannot be cancelled during the exclusion period, and the exclusion stays in place after the chosen period ends unless the person contacts GAMSTOP to remove it. Someone who chose six months in 2022 and never got in touch again still counts as registered today, so the page’s answer covers them at brands that did not exist when they signed up.
The protection stops where British licensing stops. GAMSTOP covers companies licensed in Great Britain and nothing beyond them. A Commission licence is for serving customers in Great Britain, and only those aged 18 or over, which is also the scope of every check in this article. A site that markets itself as sitting outside the scheme is telling a British visitor that it is not working under a Commission licence, or is not keeping to one, and none of those checks has anything to hold on to there.
Match the Licence Line to the Public Register
Licensed sites have to show that they are licensed, usually in small print at the foot of the page. The Commission gives the standard form as “(Business name) is licensed and regulated in Great Britain by the Gambling Commission under account number (123456).” Every check in this section starts from the number at the end of it.
The Commission’s register of gambling businesses can be searched by business name, trading name, domain name or account number. Entering the account number from the footer should bring up the company named beside it, together with a status. Active is the one to look for. Others on the register include Suspended, Revoked, Lapsed, Surrendered and Expired, and the footer of a site does not rewrite itself when the status behind it changes.
The same entry lists the activities the business is licensed to offer and any regulatory action the Commission has taken against it. For a brand with no history under its own name, that entry is the closest thing to a track record, because it follows the company holding the licence rather than the logo on the site.
The domain is the easiest part to overlook. The Commission’s advice for players is to check that the details of the licence, including the activities and website domain names, match the public register. A licence number proves that a licence exists; the domain shows whether the page in front of you is one of the addresses it covers.
A guide in this magazine on protecting a brand from domain theft describes typosquatting, where attackers register similar domain names to catch people who mistype an address. A casino brand only a few weeks old suits that trick, since few people have its exact spelling in their heads yet.
A domain search settles most of that. If the address in the browser does not appear under the licence the footer claims, leave the page before entering any details. A match deserves a little less weight than a mismatch, because the Commission notes that domain names and trading names on the register are supplied by the gambling businesses themselves and that it cannot guarantee their accuracy.
Find the Company Behind the New Name
The account number in a footer leads to a company, and that company’s name can look nothing like the logo at the top of the page. GAMSTOP’s own list of participating companies reads as one limited company after another, many of them followed by a run of brand names in brackets.
That company name matters most to someone who once stepped away from gambling with a single operator rather than through GAMSTOP. Under social responsibility code 3.9.1, a licensee that lets a customer hold more than one account must link those accounts so that, if the customer opts to self-exclude, they are effectively excluded from all gambling with that licensee, unless they made clear the request covered only some accounts or products. Companies must also take all reasonable steps to treat accounts held with their group companies in the same way.
In practice, an exclusion requested at one brand should reach another brand run by the same licensee or group, including one launched long after the request was made. It does nothing, though, at a brand owned by an unrelated group. Someone who walked away from one casino after a bad spell, and never joined GAMSTOP, has no block anywhere outside that company’s group. For that person, the footer checked against the register shows whether a new site falls inside the old exclusion or completely outside it.
The same code requires procedures that allow a customer’s individual financial limits to be applied across all of their accounts with a licensee. If you already keep a limit with one company, it is reasonable to ask a new brand under the same licence whether that limit carries across before making a first deposit, rather than assuming either way.
Set the Deposit Limit Before the Form Asks for It
The first stage of the Commission’s financial-limit changes took effect on 31 October 2025. It obliged gambling businesses to ask every newcomer for a financial limit ahead of the first deposit, and to make that limit easy to review and alter. At a new casino every customer is a new customer, so the prompt arrives as part of opening the account. It tends to appear just as attention turns to the games, which is why the figure is better chosen before the site is even open: a weekly or monthly amount that you could lose without it mattering, decided in advance and written down.
Since 30 September 2026, the label on that screen has had a precise meaning. Under the Commission’s technical standards, operators must offer gross deposit limits, and only gross limits may be called deposit limits. A gross limit caps what you pay in over the period, whatever you withdraw. A net limit counts deposits minus withdrawals, so cashing out a win frees room to deposit again. Operators may still offer net limits beside the gross version, but not under that name, and gross limits must run on fixed time frames rather than rolling ones.
The Commission’s blog post on changes to customer-led financial limits sets out the timetable, including the decision to move the start date for the gross-limit rules from 30 June to 30 September 2026. If the sign-up screen offers a figure under another name, it is worth reading the description twice before accepting it.
A limit is a ceiling, though, and some people need a closed door. When the Commission announced the GAMSTOP requirement in January 2020, Neil McArthur, then its chief executive, said self-exclusion schemes “will be most effective when used in combination with other blocking tools such as gambling blocking software and payment card blocking”. The online register also stops at the shop door: high street bookmakers have a separate scheme, Gamstop Betting Shops.
Before asking GAMSTOP to lift an old exclusion so that a new account becomes possible, it is worth ringing 0808 8020 133. That free number is GamCare’s National Gambling Helpline, and an adviser there can talk the decision through before anything is undone.
