Remote bookmaker's licence (Ireland)
A remote bookmaker’s licence was the licence the Revenue Commissioners issued under section 7B of the Betting Act 1931, inserted by the Betting (Amendment) Act 2015, to anyone taking bets by internet, phone or other remote means from people in the State. It covered the operator who sets odds and pays out on winning bets, wherever that operator was based. The Gambling Regulation Act 2024 has since moved betting licensing to the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland, so the term now names the older regime rather than the current one.
What the 2015 Act actually required
From 1 July 2015, any person or company that, in the course of business, took bets, set odds and undertook to pay out on winning bets to people in Ireland by remote means needed a remote bookmaker’s licence, and Revenue entered each holder on its Register of Remote Bookmaking Operations.
The licence was the last step of a two-stage process. An applicant first needed a certificate of personal fitness, which for remote operators was issued by the Minister for Justice and confirmed that the individual, or each relevant officer of a company, was a fit and proper person to hold the licence. Under section 7B, that certificate had to be issued no earlier than 21 days before the licence application, and Revenue could not issue the licence without a tax clearance certificate as well.
The fitness application itself carried real paperwork: notices in two national daily newspapers placed at least 14 days beforehand, police confirmation from the applicant’s country of residence, and audited accounts for the last three years.
None of this was optional for an offshore firm.
Terms it is often confused with
The nearest neighbour is the remote betting intermediary’s licence, which the same 2015 Act created for platforms that let customers bet against each other, such as betting exchanges, rather than taking a position as the bookmaker themselves. Readers often treat the two as interchangeable, but they covered different businesses and an operator needed the one that matched what it actually did.
The ordinary bookmaker’s licence is the other source of confusion. Under section 7 as amended in 2015, a shop licence also allowed remote bets, provided their value in a year stayed under a statutory cap that starts at €250,000; above that, a remote bookmaker’s licence was required.
Then there are foreign licences. A Malta Gaming Authority or Curaçao licence never stood in for an Irish one when an operator took bets from people in the State, and it gives you none of the Irish complaint routes or protections that the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 sets out, so what I check first on any betting site is whether an Irish licence is named at all and who issued it.
How the GRAI licence replaced it
Responsibility for issuing new remote bookmaker’s licences passed from Revenue to the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland, with new applications for every betting licence type going to the GRAI from 6 February 2026, after a commencement order under the 2024 Act.
The GRAI’s own remote betting licences commenced on 1 July 2026, the date on which existing remote operators’ Revenue licences expired. The equivalent of the old licence is now the Remote Betting Licence, a Business to Consumer licence, with a separate Remote Betting Intermediary Licence for exchanges.
The practical difference for a player lies in the obligations attached, which the GRAI lists as age verification, a duty to pay out winnings, a ban on facilitating credit or accepting credit cards, and closing an account when the customer asks, all backed by the Authority’s powers to investigate operators and impose sanctions. The old Revenue licence was essentially a tax and fitness permission, and it never carried a consumer code of that kind.
Remote gaming, meaning online casino, is not covered by these betting licences; the GRAI has said gaming licences open in phases across 2027 and 2028, and until they do, a casino section on an Irish-facing site does not sit under a GRAI gaming licence. If a site still describes itself by its old remote bookmaker’s licence, you should look it up on the GRAI register before depositing.
