Why So Many New Sportsbooks Launch Under an Anjouan Licence

If you follow betting markets closely, you have probably noticed how many new sportsbooks appeared over the last two years — and how many of them are licensed in the same small place. It is not coincidence, and it is not a loophole. It is a pricing decision, and it is worth understanding, whether you bet on these sites or plan to build one.

The register tells the story

Anjouan, part of the Comoros, licenses gaming through the Anjouan Betting & Gaming Board under the Computer Gaming Licensing Act. Its public register now holds 1,425 active licences, and 348 of those were issued this year alone — the fastest growth of any offshore gaming register in the industry.

New sportsbooks have to be licensed somewhere. Increasingly, that somewhere is here.

The economics, plainly

The annual fee for an Anjouan licence starts at €17,828, and tax on gross gaming revenue is 0%.

But the fee is not the real story. The real story is what the regime doesn't require: no physical office, no resident director, no server on the island. The applicant company is incorporated in Costa Rica and the entire file runs remotely, start to finish, in four to eight weeks.

Set that beside Curaçao, which was the default for a decade. Post-LOK reform, Curaçao takes 8 to 16 weeks and now requires a local entity, a resident director and an on-island server, at a higher annual cost. If you picked Curaçao for speed and price rather than for its name, the case has quietly collapsed. That is the migration the numbers above are recording.

One permit, every market

A single Anjouan authorisation covers casino, sportsbook, poker, eSports, lottery and crypto — B2C and B2B alike. For a sportsbook, that flexibility is the point: launch odds-only, add casino when the traffic justifies it, test eSports without a second application or a second fee.

For bettors, this is why so many of these sites look similar in structure — a sportsbook with a casino tab bolted on. It is not laziness. It is what the licence permits by default.

The crypto angle

A July 2025 revision aligned the regime with the FATF Travel Rule for virtual assets. That put crypto deposits and withdrawals inside the framework rather than in the grey area beside it — which is why a disproportionate share of crypto-settling sportsbooks end up here rather than somewhere that merely tolerates stablecoins.

Worth being precise, though: it is a gaming licence, not a VASP licence. It authorises a sportsbook that settles in crypto. It does not authorise an exchange or a custodian. Different permit, different regime.

What it means if you're the one betting

Two practical things.

First, check the register. Every Anjouan licence is publicly verifiable. A licence number you can actually look up is worth considerably more than a badge in a site footer, which is just an image and can say anything. If a site claims a licence and the register doesn't know about it, you have learned something important for free.

Second, understand the limits. An Anjouan licence does not authorise anything in the UK or in regulated EU markets. Operators are expected to fence restricted territories with GEO-IP tooling. If you are in one of those markets and a site is happily taking your money, that is the operator's compliance problem — and it may become your withdrawal problem.

What it means if you're the one building

The fee is never what kills applications. Three things do, and they are always the same three: corporate structure that doesn't fit the regime, local representation — files must go through an authorised agent — and the ongoing obligations that arrive with approval and surprise people who didn't plan for them.

None of it is complicated. All of it is cheaper to solve before submission than after.

The summary

€17,828 a year, 0% on gross gaming revenue, four to eight weeks, no local presence, every vertical under one permit. That is the whole explanation for the wave of new sportsbooks — and for why the register grew by 348 licences in a single year.

It is not a shortcut around regulation. It is regulation priced for operators who aren't chasing London or Malta.