Evolution Malta reaches £4.75m UKGC settlement over unlicensed GB distribution
The penalty centres on anti-money laundering failures that let Evolution’s games reach British consumers through six unlicensed websites, with the Commission saying it considered suspending Evolution’s licence.
Between December 2023 and November 2024, six websites with no UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) licence served Evolution Malta Holding Limited’s online casino games to consumers in Great Britain, drawing large volumes of UK traffic over that period. The UKGC has reached a £4.75m settlement with the Malta-based supplier over its B2B gatekeeping obligations.
AML failures, not a paperwork oversight
The UKGC’s published public statement sets out breaches of two licence conditions, comprising four findings.
- Risk assessment: Evolution’s money-laundering and terrorist-financing risk assessment, between April 2024 and January 2025, failed to flag that two operator customers were supplying its games to Great Britain without a Commission licence.
- Policies and controls: Its anti-money-laundering policies and controls lacked sufficient detail on due diligence and monitoring of sub-licensees.
- Effectiveness: Those controls were not effective in keeping its games out of the GB market via unlicensed operators.
- 2017 regulations: Evolution did not sufficiently comply with the Money Laundering Regulations’ requirements on risk assessment, policies and controls, and customer due diligence.
John Pierce, Director of Enforcement at the UKGC, said:
‘This case exposed serious weaknesses in Evolution’s money laundering risk assessment and its oversight of risks within its supply chain.’
Pierce added that the company’s AML risk assessment had become outdated and failed to properly weigh the risk of its games reaching consumers through unlicensed operators, leaving a significant gap between the controls Evolution had on paper and how they worked in practice.
Pierce said the investigation and testing uncovered failings serious enough that the Commission considered suspending Evolution’s licence. Evolution responded quickly once the issues were flagged, according to Pierce, tightening its controls, and the Commission’s follow-up testing has not found further instances of concern.
What this means for B2B supplier compliance
The action reinforces a clear principle that holding a UKGC software or game-host licence carries an affirmative obligation to know how and where your products are being consumed, not just to have policies describing that obligation on paper.
Evolution Malta Holding Limited is part of Evolution AB, the Stockholm-listed B2B provider that employs around 22,900 people across studios in Europe, the Americas, and Asia, and counts roughly 870 operators among its clients. The parent company holds Malta Gaming Authority and UKGC licences alongside approvals in numerous other jurisdictions, including Belgium, Canada, Romania, and South Africa.
Scale, if anything, raises the compliance burden rather than reducing it. A supplier at this size has proportionately more downstream operator relationships to monitor.
The weakness the Commission identified sat at the risk-assessment level, specifically the failure to flag that two counterparty operators were passing content into GB without authorisation. That is an AML and third-party oversight failure, not merely a contractual one.
A concurrent financial commitment
Evolution AB also gave notice terminating its proposed merger with Galaxy Gaming, Inc. on 21 July 2026, two days before the UKGC published its enforcement notice. Evolution has said it expects to continue working with Galaxy Gaming within their existing commercial relationship, and it is liable to pay Galaxy Gaming a termination fee of $5,234,678, which it has said it intends to pay.
Commenting on the deal in its latest Interim report for January-June 2026, Evolution CEO Martin Carlesund, said:
‘Two years have passed, and Evolution has spent significant time, effort and resources handling the rather large amount of administration required to close this acquisition. Galaxy is a great company; however, due to its size, the transaction is not significant for Evolution.’
Therefore, Evolution is carrying concurrent financial and regulatory obligations within the same week.
Whether a £4.75m settlement is large enough to meaningfully alter compliance behaviour at a group with close to 900 operator relationships is a fair question, particularly since the Commission itself says it considered a licence suspension rather than a fine.
The Commission has not published its calculation methodology for the settlement figure.
What to watch
Evolution must commission an independent audit of its policies, procedures and controls within 12 months of the licence review’s conclusion, under the terms of the settlement.
More broadly, Pierce framed the case as illustrative rather than isolated, saying the Commission ‘will continue to proactively monitor and test the market to identify licensed products being made available through illegal operators targeting consumers in Great Britain.’ Other B2B software and game-host licensees should expect the same third-party oversight standard applied across the sector.
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