The Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner is the office at the centre of the territory’s gambling regulation, but its role is easy to misunderstand. It is not the body that issues or revokes licences outright — that authority sits with the Licensing Authority, the Minister responsible for gambling — but it is the office that supervises licence holders day to day, and the one operators and players actually interact with.
Structure and Role
Gibraltar runs a dual regulatory structure. The Minister, acting as the Licensing Authority, grants and formally withdraws licences. The Commissioner, appointed under gambling legislation, then supervises whether licensees are operating within the terms of that licence, monitors compliance with the AML Code and technical standards, and investigates complaints.
The Commissioner’s Remit
In practice, the Commissioner’s office is the one publishing guidance, running inspections and dealing with day-to-day regulatory questions. Its remit covers corporate substance requirements, anti-money-laundering compliance, technical and game-fairness standards, and enforcement action against operators who fall short of their licence conditions.
Powers Under the Gambling Act 2025
The 2025 Act gave the Commissioner a materially wider toolkit than it held before. Under the old 2005 Act, the main enforcement option was effectively binary: suspend or revoke a licence. The new Act introduces administrative penalties, formal cease-and-desist orders, time-limited suspensions and prohibition orders.
The New Appeals Route Above It
One of the more significant additions in the 2025 Act is the Gambling Appeals Tribunal, an independent body that sits above the Commissioner and reviews challenges to its decisions. Under the old framework, an operator’s only real recourse against a Commissioner ruling was judicial review through the courts.