We checked 20 casino brands sold to Malaysians. Not one had a clean, current licence for its Malaysian site

The results, brand by brand

The order follows our individual licence checks first, then the brands added for this report. It is not a ranking. Eight brands have a full licence check of their own; the other twelve were checked for this report only. *uwin33 shows only a Malta Gaming Authority logo, with no number or company; the Malta register blocked our searches, so that result is unconfirmed.

How we checked

For each brand we found the site that serves Malaysian visitors, using the brand’s own redirects and country selectors, and recorded what it says about its licence, word for word. We then searched the register of every regulator it names, plus the main registers as controls^[5][3]:

• Curaçao: the online gaming licence registry of 20 October 2026, the certificate holders list and the enforcement register^[2][6];
• Anjouan’s public register^[1];
• PAGCOR’s lists of accredited operators, brands and domains^[7];
• the Gambling Commission’s registers for Great Britain^[8];
• the Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission’s current and former licensee lists^[9][10].

All checks ran from a Malaysian connection. Where internet providers block a brand’s domains, we used encrypted DNS to reach them, never a VPN. We did not open accounts, deposit or play. We did not use affiliate review sites as a source for any licence fact. The method is the one in our step-by-step guide to checking a licence on the regulator’s register, applied the same way to every brand.

Finding 1: most claims lead nowhere

Eleven of the 18 readable brands could not be tied to any register. The claims took a few recurring forms:

• A logo with nothing behind it. uwin33 shows a Malta Gaming Authority logo that links nowhere. Ecwon shows a PAGCOR logo with a link to “#”. A site selling 918Kiss labels the old “Gaming Curaçao” logo its “Official Gaming License Certificate”, and the same image file doubles as its “918KISS Official Logo”^[11].
• A licence that no longer exists. Maxim88 and 96M cite Curaçao master licences. The one Maxim88 cites, 365/JAZ, expired on 18 August 2024, and Curaçao ended the whole sublicence system in October 2025^[12][13].
• A regulator that cannot issue the licence. PAGCOR cancelled all licences for foreign-facing online gaming in December 2024. Maxim88, Ecwon and Winbox’s agents still claim PAGCOR^[14].
• Testing labs presented as regulators. Maxim88 calls BMM and iTech Labs “international gambling authorities”^[15].
• Just the word “licensed”. Pussy888 and Empire777 say they are licensed and name no regulator at all^[11].

Our explainer on why old Curaçao master licences no longer count covers the most common of these.

Finding 2: a real licence usually covers a different website

Seven brands do have a register entry for the company they name, but none is a clean match for a Malaysian visitor:

• The Malaysian domain is not on the licence (4 brands). BK8’s and me88’s Anjouan licences list other domains^[1]. 12BET’s Curaçao certificate names 12bet.com, while Malaysians are sent to a different domain^[16][17]. 1xBet’s certificate names 1xbet.com. Its Malaysian site shows no licence at all, and the footer’s licence list is empty^[18][19].
• The term on Curaçao’s registry has ended (2 brands). Stake’s entry shows an expiry of 9 June 2026, and Dafabet’s 15 October 2026, both with the status “Assessment in progress”^[2]. Dafabet’s seal certificate, also issued by the Curaçao authority, says “Active”^[20]. The regulator’s two records disagree, and we report both.
• The licence holder excludes Malaysia (1 brand). Fun88’s Anjouan licence covers fun88.com. Its terms list Malaysia among restricted jurisdictions, and from a Malaysian connection, browsers are shown “IP Access Restricted”^[21][22].

Finding 3: the terms rarely say who you are dealing with

Only Stake, 12BET and 1xBet name a company in their terms^[23][17][19]. Most of the rest refer only to “The Company”. Where a company is named elsewhere on the site, as Dafabet does in its footer, the terms that govern a dispute still do not say it^[24]. And only one brand, Fun88, lists Malaysia as a country it does not serve. Most of the others have no country list at all, or one that leaves Malaysia out^[21][24][23].

Finding 4: licence wording is often hidden from visitors

Several brands keep their fullest licence wording where a visitor will not see it:

• W88’s on-screen claim is a licence from “First Cagayan Leisure & Resort Corporation (CEZA)”, which publishes no licensee register. Its terms name a Tobique Gaming Commission licence and an operating company, Marquee Holdings Limitada, but only inside HTML comments that browsers do not display^[25]. Marquee Holdings Limitada is on the Tobique list, which gives no licence number or domains^[26].
• 1xBet’s Malaysian licence wording appears only in a downloadable 277-page rules PDF. The PDF is written for a brand called “1xCinta” and cites “Curaçao eGaming”, the name of an old master licence holder^[19][27].
• Maxim88’s and 96M’s Curaçao wording sits in their site settings and language files, and did not appear in either footer when we loaded the sites^[15][28].

Other things we found

• 1xBet’s regulatory record. The Netherlands Gaming Authority fined 1X Corp N.V. and Exinvest Limited €400,000 in January 2019 over 1xbet.com^[29]. Poland’s Ministry of Finance has listed 1xbet.com on its register of prohibited gambling domains since 2017^[30].
• An expired licence still marked valid. Anjouan’s register lists a licence for 12bet.com, under a different company, with an expiry date of 17 October 2026 and the status “valid”. 12BET’s site never mentions it^[1].
• A brand that has gone dark. No 188BET domain resolved from any network we tried. Its operator surrendered its Isle of Man licence on 19 March 2024, and PAGCOR announced in February 2024 that a Philippine company would run 188BET^[10][31][3].

What this means for a reader in Malaysia

A licence claim on a casino site sold to Malaysians is, more often than not, a claim that leads nowhere. Even the real licences in this set either cover a different website, show an ended term, or belong to an operator that says it does not serve Malaysia. And a perfect match would still not make the site lawful to use here: the Common Gaming Houses Act 1953 makes gaming an offence for the player, and Kuching magistrates fined players for it in 2026^[4][32]. Our guide to Malaysian online gambling law explains the offences. If you are reading this because gambling has become hard to control, our guide to free gambling help in Malaysia lists people who will talk to you today.

Using this data

Journalists, researchers and regulators are welcome to quote or reproduce these findings, with a link to this page as the source. The full results table is available as a CSV file of all 20 results. Registers change, so cite the check dates: 28 October 2026 for the first eight brands and 29 October 2026 for the rest. Our full licence checks of eight brands carry the detail and every source for those brands, and any later change is recorded on our updates page.