MGA’s 2025 report shows AI now embedded in Malta oversight

MGA’s 2025 report shows AI now embedded in Malta oversight

Every AI flag still goes through a person before anything happens. 

The Malta Gaming Authority has started using artificial intelligence (AI) to help screen licence applicants and spot risk in operator data. It set this out in its 2025 Annual Report and Financial Statements, published on 7 July 2026.

Where the AI actually sits

Two uses are named in the report. One is a new AI tool inside the MGA‘s Criminal Probity checks. It scans the seed data submitted with an application and flags anything that needs a closer look. Staff then review the flag themselves, weigh it against the jurisdiction involved and the authority’s own risk criteria, and decide.

The other use is in reviewing Industry Performance Returns, the regular filings operators submit. In this case, AI is used to spot patterns and anomalies that might otherwise take longer to surface manually, giving supervisors an earlier read on where problems might be building.

The MGA CEO Charles Mizzi sums up the shift in one line: 

‘We recognise that AI tools are not infallible; accordingly, our approach places human oversight and verification at the centre of every implementation.’

The report frames both tools as useful for narrowing down where to look. However, the final call still requires human judgment. 

Mizzi’s wider point is that the authority is trying to work smarter with the same resources, not simply add more checks on top of existing ones.

Licensing stayed selective

The authority received 38 new gaming licence applications during the year and issued 19 of them. A further ten renewal applications came in, of which eight were renewed. Its Supervisory Council rejected two applications outright after what the report calls the ‘Minded Letter’ process, where the information submitted was found to be false, misleading or materially incomplete. 

Complex cases went to the Fit and Proper Committee, which looked at 20 entities and 38 individuals and found seven of them fell short of the fit-and-proper bar.

Enforcement and player protection

On the compliance side, the MGA ran 15 full-scope audits and 109 thematic reviews across the year. 

Enforcement produced 35 cease and desist letters, 22 warnings and 30 administrative penalties worth €162,520 in total, plus one licence suspension and two cancellations. 

Anti-money laundering supervision stayed active too: the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit and the MGA jointly ran 21 compliance examinations, and one licensee faced FIAU remediation and/or administrative measures totalling just under €26,500. 

On the player side, the Player Support Unit closed out 3,718 requests for assistance, and the authority logged 1,757 player funds reports. 

It also reviewed 109 URLs suspected of unauthorised gaming activity and confirmed 42 of them were carrying fraudulent references to the MGA or its licensees, adding them to its public warning list. 

On sports integrity, licensees filed 280 suspicious betting reports, the MGA passed on 192 alerts and took part in 66 investigations around the world.

The MGA year in numbers

None of these totals are dramatically different from previous years on their own. What’s changed is the machinery behind some of them. A chunk of the screening work that used to be entirely manual now gets a first pass from software before a person signs off.

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