What is Master Licence?

A master licence is a licence held by one company that entitles it to issue sublicences to other operators. Curaçao ran this model for two decades: four master licence holders — numbers like 8048/JAZ and 1668/JAZ — each authorised dozens or hundreds of casinos that then printed the master's number, plus a suffix, in their own footers. The model is why so many offshore casino footers look alike and why the numbers are hard to interpret. A sublicensed casino was not directly supervised by the regulator; it answered to the master licence holder, whose own commercial interests were rarely aligned with policing its customers. Curaçao's 2024 reform replaced this structure with direct licensing by the Curaçao Gaming Authority, so a number in the old 8048/JAZ format now signals a permit issued under a superseded regime — worth checking rather than trusting, because operators often leave the old wording in place long after the licence behind it has changed.