Is the era of ultra cheap licenses over?

[Emitdama]

That's just the cost of the license, but a casino has other costs involved, such as taxes, technology, compliance, and legal, among others, which, added together, I don't think is that cheap. Of course, a casino makes a lot of money, but it's not enough to just make money; the owner has to know how to manage it. But certainly, if you only consider the cost of the license, it's still very cheap.

Yeah casinos has other fees that they pay and you have already mentioned some of them, there are some casinos that are heavy taxed and they spend a lot of money on that.
Yeah casinos makes a lot of money, but not all casinos makes a lot of money, as a casino for you to make huge amount of money you also need to spend huge amount of money on promotions.
If you want to start up a new casino I don’t think you should be considering the money you will spend in getting licensed and other things, the most costly thing is promotion, doing ad will cost you a lot of money, license is cheap and easy to get this days.

It is not usually the casino that pays the tax but is recovered from the gamblers. It is us who has to bear such costs. Yes, casino would have to pay taxes on their revenue which they can't skip but that is understandable. That would not force casinos to find other ways of making money because the tax will always remain constant no matter how big their earning is. Casinos do make a lot of money so they can definitely afford to pay these taxes.

Starting a new casino is not that difficult in the current times with AI on our side but yes, as you said, promotion is what plays a bigger picture here. Initially, a good sum is required for these promotions because of the cut-throat competition.

[Floxynice]

That's just the cost of the license, but a casino has other costs involved, such as taxes, technology, compliance, and legal, among others, which, added together, I don't think is that cheap. Of course, a casino makes a lot of money, but it's not enough to just make money; the owner has to know how to manage it. But certainly, if you only consider the cost of the license, it's still very cheap.

Yeah casinos has other fees that they pay and you have already mentioned some of them, there are some casinos that are heavy taxed and they spend a lot of money on that.
Yeah casinos makes a lot of money, but not all casinos makes a lot of money, as a casino for you to make huge amount of money you also need to spend huge amount of money on promotions.
If you want to start up a new casino I don’t think you should be considering the money you will spend in getting licensed and other things, the most costly thing is promotion, doing ad will cost you a lot of money, license is cheap and easy to get this days.

Yea, getting a license is not only all about getting a cheap licencing fee because if it were only about licence fees alone, casinos will at least try to raise such money instead of being grouped among the list of unlicensed and illegal casinos.

Apart from the financial aspect, casinos need to comply with all legal, KYC,  AML and regulatory requirements. I think all of these requirements are the major reasons most unlicensed casinos find it difficult to get a license. When we say a particular jurisdiction is strict will its license issuance, these are the things that make it strict.

[Yorubek]

$20K is still kind of cheaper and the casinos don't really care about this cost because they are probably investing in millions if their intention is to run it as a business rather than just a quick scheme. I bet the filing process might have costed more for than than the licensing fee, law firms are dealing with in thousands per hours now.

The problem is, for gambler we really can't know which online casino has the plan to stay in business for long or the type that wants to cut it short in the mid way, they all appear to be long term plans until they aren't, what I will never do is leave behind some amount of money on my account balance as if it's my bank account or my Bitcoin wallet, the last thing I want to trust is any online casinos unless they are on league with Stake or Rainbet, and some few others.

However, the situation may be different for casinos that have a valid license and a good reputation, and casinos that do not have a valid license can close or disappear at any time. It is true that it is impossible to say for sure how long a casino will be in the market or that there will be no guarantee that it will not be affected by scam. It is reasonable to not stay in most casinos for long, and to take precautions at all times so that we can protect ourselves from big losses.

[Alex077]

...
Yea, getting a license is not only all about getting a cheap licencing fee because if it were only about licence fees alone, casinos will at least try to raise such money instead of being grouped among the list of unlicensed and illegal casinos.
...

After all getting a license is just the beginning, from that point on, the operator has to maintain financial transparency, comply with AML/KYC requirements, monitor the source of funds, and follow responsible gambling rules.
However, for gamblers, the lack of a license creates additional risks, especially when problems come up with withdrawing big winnings or getting accounts blocked. In situations like these, there's often simply no independent regulator they can turn to.
And there's one more thing worth mentioning: how strict a licensing system is depends not just on how many requirements it has, but also on how effectively the regulator enforces them.

[Floxynice]

...
Yea, getting a license is not only all about getting a cheap licencing fee because if it were only about licence fees alone, casinos will at least try to raise such money instead of being grouped among the list of unlicensed and illegal casinos.
...

After all getting a license is just the beginning, from that point on, the operator has to maintain financial transparency, comply with AML/KYC requirements, monitor the source of funds, and follow responsible gambling rules.
However, for gamblers, the lack of a license creates additional risks, especially when problems come up with withdrawing big winnings or getting accounts blocked. In situations like these, there's often simply no independent regulator they can turn to.
And there's one more thing worth mentioning: how strict a licensing system is depends not just on how many requirements it has, but also on how effectively the regulator enforces them.

Gamblers have a choice; to either gamble with only a casino that have duly met the requirements to be licensed or take the risk of gambling with an unlicensed casino. It is entirely their choice to make.

And about the effectiveness of the regulators in enforcing the licensing requirements, you are right. I believe this also explains why most gamblers do not get justice or disputes not properly resolved between the casinos and the gamblers when disputes arise. That is because the regulators are weak or only concern themselves with earning through issuing licences and other fees.

[Texac]

I'm wondering if the lower prices are going to change anything because Anjuan already seems to be having some competition.

Basically, the gambling industry is a business in nature, meaning that if they have limited capital, of course they prefer a cheap license and if they have large capital, of course they choose an expensive license, In terms of licensing, each cheap and expensive casino certainly has advantages and risks faced by the online casino itself, one of which is reputation and ease of operation.

In my opinion, business model, target market and payment providers requirement are much more important here. Even large operator might use relatively cheap offshore license if it make sense for its business.
But there's one important point here.  For example, license from UK or Malta are valued not simply because they're more expensive to obtain, but because of requirement they impose on operator regarding financial stability, AML/KYC procedure, responsible gambling and complaint resolution. It's effectiveness of regulation, not price of license, that build trust.
As for cheaper license, I do think there are potentially greater risk for player, especially when regulator barely gets involved in disputes between casino and their customer.

[Dogedegen]

I think the era of "cheap" licenses is going to be over any time soon, in my opinion.
It is a matter of supply and demand, after all, there are many countries which seemingly have started to show their interest in issuing their own licenses to compete against Curaçao and Antojuan. Even if those two countries start to increase the costs of their licenses for casinos, eventually other countries will try to lure those new casinos with a tight budget when cheaper licenses.

Curaçao is not stupid, they will try to keep their licenses affordable enough and within the industry standard, so they can continue to lead the market.

You are correct from speaking in the terms of competitive side of things and the financial lucrativeness of this. But this is not the only perspective to be had when it comes to licenses. Other big countries that are more important in the world like the US and the EU have several ways of engaging in this problem, and they can draw other large countries as partners to make it even more effective. One of the first things to do is that they can regulate it so that any licenses issued outside of their jurisdictions are not valid for their own citizens, this will cripple a lot of the usefulness of the licenses. If they add criminal liability they can go after the owners of the casinos wherever they are. The other thing is that they can punish the countries for not cooperating or making licenses cheap through economic means, and there are many mechanisms for that. If some small countries do not want to behave in the best interest of the world, then larger countries can use diplomatic or economic means to make them do the right thing.

Actually the United States and the European Union (Plus the United Kingdom) already do that in order to control their own gamblers and issue their own licenses. Caribbean gambling licenses like those issued by Curaçao are not valid in the UK, the USA and many countries in the EU, so casinos see themselves in a situation in which they would need to get additional licenses for those countries.

That also happens with casinos, initially Binance (global) was not allowed to offer it's services to people in the United States, so they had to create their own exchange (branched) in order to cater American traders in the USA. Stake is present in the UK and Europe, but with different licenses than those issued by Curaçao and Antojuan.

That is good that you brought those examples up. They show that there is some enforcement in this area, but without a more global involvement it is not effective enough. It is effective when it comes to only dealing with their own people and protecting them, but it is not effective in solving the problem on a global scale. We need many more countries to get involved in this, and it would be good to gather data about the countries which have many people playing in such casinos. A join push and enforcement could completely devalue these licenses.

This is one of those loopholes that needs to be closed, it is a bit similar to loopholes that rich people use. Normal people complain about those and get angry that rich people are able to exploit them and want them to be closed, but when holes benefit them personally in some way they ignore them or even actively don't want them to be closed.

[tread93]

I remember it used to be the case that an online casino could go through the whole process of acquiring a license under the Curacao sub license scheme for a very affordable price maybe a few hundreds dollars total.

Nowdays, after Curacao changed their licensing process, their license became significantly more expensive. Of course some casinos renewed their license under the new fee scheme that is up to the tens of thousands of USD per year, but some opted for different licenses. I've seen mostly the Anjuan license around but also in some rare cases the Kahnawake license.

I noticed Vunuatu is also trying to promote an online gaming license with a cost of around 10k EUR per year. This is significantly cheaper than both Curacao and Anjuan fees but also I've never seen a casino under this license for some reason
 Still though I haven't seen any country or territory offering licensed for as cheap as Curacao sub-licenses used to go. I'm wondering if the lower prices are going to change anything because Anjuan already seems to be having some competition.

I feel like this is a really good thing. I mean on the outside we see higher prices and more barriers to entry but isn’t that sort of the point? Make it harder for the scaminos to get out there and create a larger barrier to entry to help create more of a narrow pathway for ones that actually want to do things the right way. Idk it just seems like that is a good thing as opposed to bad.