You open the site you have been playing on for months, and the home page has changed. A message announces that the service is closing. Your balance is still sitting in your account.
The first thing you read then, on just about every site covering the Belgian market, is that a licensed operator has deposited a guarantee of €250,000. The figure is reassuring. It is also accurate, and it has nothing to do with you.
I read what the law actually provides, article by article, along with what the terms of the seven operators I have audited say about it. Here is what I found, and above all what I did not find. The sites themselves are among the licensed online casinos I go through.
What the €250,000 guarantee really covers
Article 71 of the Gambling Act leaves little room for doubt. The guarantee is intended to cover the non-payment of the fees and expenses referred to in articles 19 and 72. It is deposited with the Deposit and Consignment Office, at the latest five days before gaming operations start.
That leaves the question of which fees. Article 19 answers it: the installation, staffing and operating costs of the Gaming Commission, borne entirely by licence holders. That money feeds a Commission fund, within the budget of the federal public service for the Economy.
The rest of article 71 drives the point home. In the event of non-payment, the Commission is entitled to draw the contributions owed to it from the guarantee. And if the guarantee falls short, the operator must top it up within five days, failing which its licence is suspended. In other words, that deposit guarantees the regulator will be paid.
Eight amounts that show what the deposit is for
The table of guarantees reads better than any explanation.
| Licence | What it allows | Guarantee |
|---|---|---|
| A | Casino | €250,000 |
| A+ | The same casino, online | €250,000 |
| B | Gaming arcade | €75,000 |
| B+ | The same arcade, online | €75,000 |
| E | Supplier of games and platforms | €25,000, or €12,500 per batch of 50 machines |
| F1 | Betting organiser | €10,000 |
| F1+ | The same betting, online | €75,000 |
| F1P | Betting on horse racing | €0 |
Two rows stand out. A betting organiser deposits €10,000 for its physical activity and €75,000 for the same activity online: the legislature clearly considers the online side to carry more exposure. And a licence can guarantee nothing at all, as the one covering horse racing bets does.
A zero amount would make no sense if the guarantee measured the risk carried by players. It makes a great deal of sense if it measures what the operator owes the administration. Among the sites I have gone through, one holds an A+ licence, and that is the only A+ holder I have audited.
Withdrawal, suspension or expiry: three different exits
A licence can disappear in three ways, and they are nothing alike.
By reasoned decision, the Commission can issue a warning, suspend or revoke the licence for a set period, and ban the operation of certain games. The operator is invited by registered letter to present its defence within thirty days, in writing or orally, and may be assisted. The Commission then deliberates within two months.
A judge, for their part, can order the permanent or temporary closure of the venue. In that case the Commission has no discretion left: it is required to withdraw the licence concerned. Finally, a licence can simply expire. For an online site that is the most common case, because an online licence has no calendar of its own: it follows that of the physical venue it is attached to. That is the difference between a licence and its online extension, and it explains why a site sometimes disappears without any incident at all. The dates are in the register, along with the date each licence was granted.
Solvency of 40 per cent, the only promise made to players
There is, however, one provision that explicitly addresses paying players. It sits not in the Act but in the royal decree of 21 June 2011 on the qualitative conditions for supplementary licences, whose article 3 fits on a single line: the applicant provides proof that it has solvency of 40 per cent.
The report to the King accompanying the decree gives the reason without hedging: the applicant’s solvency matters because players must be given the assurance that they can be paid. And that is also why more is required of an online operator than of one in the physical world.
That ratio is checked at the time of the application. No text otherwise requires player money to be held separately from company funds: the law asks only for a detailed plan on the security of payment operations between operator and player.
What the Council of State wrote before publication
That same decree was put to the Council of State, which issued its opinion in January 2011. It did not stop at drafting points.
The Council found that the text failed to implement the statutory authorisation, that for most of the conditions it merely provided that the applicant would state what it will do to get there, and that it therefore had to be revised and completed. On article 3 the comment fits in one sentence: the notion of solvency of 40 per cent must be clarified.
The decree was published unchanged, in June 2011, and it is still in force.
When a casino closes, what happens to your balance?
The law knows perfectly well how to send money back to a player when it chooses to. Article 15/3 shows it: where the Commission finds that a player was able to play without an age check, it can decide that the entire stake goes to that player.
For a gaming account whose operator stops trading, no equivalent provision exists. No guarantee fund, no order of priority, no deadline to empty the account.
On the contract side the silence is the same. The terms of the seven operators I have audited all organise the end of the relationship at the initiative of the player or the operator, and none contemplates the operator itself disappearing. Three of them even reserve the right to hold back whatever remains in the account, to cover administrative costs or any damage. On a site without a Belgian licence the question does not even arise: I have set out elsewhere what a Maltese or Curaçao licence is worth. And to find out who actually runs the site you play on, the groups that hold several licences.
Where the information in this article comes from, and what this article is not
Public texts, cited by number. Everything you read here comes from the Gambling Act in its consolidated version, from a royal decree and its report to the King, from an opinion of the Council of State, and from the terms and conditions operators publish themselves. Every reference is listed at the end, so you can read the source without going through me. Note that the English version of the Act published by the Gaming Commission is an unofficial translation; the French and Dutch texts are the authoritative ones.
No outside advice. The Gaming Commission was not consulted, has not reviewed this article and is in no way associated with it. No lawyer, no law firm and no operator was asked for input. The analysis that follows commits no one but me.
This is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer. I describe what texts say on the date given; I do not say what a court would decide in a specific case, and I take no position on whether the clauses mentioned would hold. For a personal situation, only a lawyer or the competent mediation service can answer.
No accusation of any kind. The operators mentioned hold a valid Belgian licence. The clauses discussed are reported by their meaning, as they stood in their terms and conditions when I read them; an operator can change them at any time. If you spot an inaccuracy, get in touch: I correct on evidence and date the correction.
Licence withdrawn: your questions
Can I recover my balance from the deposited guarantee?
Nothing in the law provides for it. The guarantee under article 71 covers the contributions owed to the Commission, and it is the Commission that may draw what it is owed from it. No text opens that deposit to players.
Who can I turn to in a dispute with an operator?
The law names a contact point few players know about: the Consumer Mediation Service, which receives and handles requests for out-of-court settlement of a consumer dispute linked to games of chance. Where the request concerns a breach of the Act, that service passes it to the Commission.
Can an operator challenge the withdrawal of its licence?
The Act organises an appeal to the court of first instance for administrative fines, with suspensive effect. Decisions on licences themselves are challenged before the Council of State, where several actions against Commission decisions have already been brought.
Is a blocked site one that has lost its licence?
No, quite the opposite. The Commission keeps a list of addresses of sites offering games of chance in Belgium without a licence, and those addresses go to internet providers to be blocked. A blocked site has therefore never held a Belgian licence.
How do I find out when my site’s licence expires?
It appears in the Commission’s public register, which keeps an up-to-date list of the supplementary licences issued. That is the only way to know how long a site stays authorised, since that period follows the physical licence.
Sources and limits
- Act of 7 May 1999 on games of chance, betting, gaming establishments and the protection of players, unofficially consolidated version published by the Gaming Commission: articles 8/1, 9, 15/2, 15/3, 15/4, 15/6, 19, 43/8, 68 and 71. The English text is an unofficial translation; the French and Dutch versions prevail
- Act of 10 January 2010 amending gambling legislation, article 44, which set the guarantee amounts in euros
- Royal decree of 21 June 2011 on the qualitative conditions an applicant for a supplementary licence must meet, articles 3 and 4, and its report to the King
- Opinion 49.082/2 of the legislation section of the Council of State, 12 January 2011
- Terms and conditions of the seven audited operators, read in September 2026
Three limits: no case of a licensed Belgian operator disappearing is documented in this article, for want of a public precedent; the amounts are those of the consolidated version at the time of reading, and the King may change them by decree; and finally, I describe texts, I take no position on what a judge would decide in a particular case.
This article is general information. It is neither legal advice nor a recommendation to play, or not to play, on any given site. The texts cited can change after the date of reading; in a dispute, only the version in force at the time of the events counts.
One practical closing note: a licence expiry date is there to be read in the register, and that is the first check to run before opening an account anywhere. I have set out how I check that an operator is in order, control by control.
Three years in iGaming, focused on licensed casinos in Belgium. I write every CasinAudit page myself and check each figure against an official source.