Malta Gaming Authority scales back foreign licence reform as Dutch data shows limits

The Malta Gaming Authority's foreign licence reform has lost most of its original scope. The regulator has dropped several of the amendments it proposed to its Recognition Notice regime after industry pushback, GamblingNews reports, citing a Next.io report. The MGA says it still wants stronger supervision. Whether it can impose it may depend on the Maltese government.

What the MGA proposed, and what is left

The MGA opened a consultation in April as part of Malta's National AML/CFT Strategy for 2024-2026. Its proposals included more extensive corporate disclosures, more detailed financial information and a standardised legal opinion for foreign licence applications.

Several of those amendments are now off the table. The authority will keep consulting foreign licence holders and collecting suggestions. It acknowledged that some of the original requirements may be impossible without changes to the existing framework, which would need legislation. Its final approach, it says, will separate B2B and B2C businesses and rely on targeted, risk-based information gathering. Information collection is due to start this year, beginning with B2C Recognition Notice holders for the 2025 reporting period.

Why Recognition Notices drew scrutiny

Recognition Notices allow Maltese-based companies to operate under licences issued by regulators elsewhere in the EU and EEA, and in some other jurisdictions judged to have broadly equivalent anti-money laundering standards. The route covers B2C operators and B2B suppliers and spares them a separate MGA licence.

Two concerns drove the review: that some companies may operate under foreign licences without informing the MGA, and that some may benefit from weaker AML and counter-terrorist financing controls in the jurisdictions where they source those licences. Malta's own record is part of the backdrop. The country was placed on the Financial Action Task Force grey list in 2021 and removed the following year.

Dutch online casino revenue fell 18.2% in 2025

In the Netherlands, the Kansspelautoriteit published its annual market scan for 2025 alongside its eleventh monitoring report, which covers the first half of 2026. Licensed gross gaming revenue across the market came to EUR 4.1bn in 2025, down from EUR 4.5bn a year earlier, GamblingNews reports. Online casino GGR fell 18.2% to EUR 923.4m and online sports betting 30.2% to EUR 251.2m. The KSA partly attributes both drops to new player protection measures, including the net deposit limit that from October 2024 capped monthly deposits at EUR 300 for young adults and EUR 700 for everyone aged 24 and over, SBC News reports.

Land-based GGR fell 4.7%. Gaming machines in arcades brought in EUR 539m and machines in hospitality venues EUR 104m. Holland Casino, the only company licensed to run land-based casinos, went the other way with a 2.8% rise to EUR 683m, which GamblingNews credits to slot performance.

Accounts rose, player numbers did not

Online GGR reached EUR 670m in the first half of 2026, up from EUR 602m in the previous six months, GamblingNews reports. Casino games against the house accounted for EUR 492m and sports betting EUR 163m, with sport rising from about 20% to 24% of the total. The KSA says the rise may be linked to the men's FIFA World Cup, and iGB records a clear increase in new accounts in June. Operators opened 563,000 accounts during the half-year, against 529,000 in the previous period.

Average monthly active accounts rose to 1.48m from 1.38m. Panel data from researcher GfK showed no increase in the number of people gambling with licensed operators. The KSA estimates 820,000 people gambled at some point in the half-year and about 490,000 in an average month; SBC News puts the individual player count at 820,000, down from 830,000, and monthly active individuals at 490,000, down from 510,000. The gap between accounts and players suggests more people hold multiple accounts, which the KSA says may be connected to deposit limits.

Those player numbers sit against a much lower share of the money. GamblingNews reports that 59% of everything spent on online gambling in the first half of 2026 went to legal companies, that is, the licensed share of the whole market including unlicensed sites, up from 54% in the previous six months. iGB, working from the same KSA reports, describes the 59% as the licensed market's share of total gross gaming yield for 2025, against 54% the year before. On the player side, between 94% and 97% used legal providers, depending on the method. The KSA says its illegal-market estimates are uncertain and that it is refining them; it puts roughly 20,000 people a month gambling only with unlicensed operators, with another 10,000 using both.

Average monthly losses per used account were EUR 75, and EUR 34 for accounts used by 18 to 23-year-olds. A separate KSA estimate, accounting for multiple accounts and intermittent play, put losses at EUR 137 per person per month, up from EUR 121. Young adults hold about 22% of legal accounts while making up roughly 9.2% of the adult population. In 2025, 3,108 people entered specialised treatment with gambling as their primary problem, 14% more than in 2024, and the Cruks self-exclusion register reached about 120,200 registrations by 31 July 2026. Online advertising placements fell by about a third, from an average of 75,000 a month to around 50,000.

What happens next is partly procedural. The MGA intends to begin gathering information from B2C Recognition Notice holders this year, and any wider requirements wait on legislation. In the Netherlands, the government tabled a near-total ban on online gambling advertising in June, and the trade body VNLOK has taken Meta to court over ads it says come from operators without a Dutch licence.