You are definitely right, this days, personally value partnerships more than licenses, it takes a casino with good reputation and seriousness in their business to partner with other big and reputable companies and individuals with significance..
We have many of such casinos on this forum with stake being one I am so sure of, there are others but won't mention names since I am not so sure which and which aside stake.
Thats not far from the truth apparently but, it would be very wrong to compare a projects one step to another projects one thousand steps. The other have got years of patronage, positive advertisements from a humble beginning on there side while the other is just testing the shores and gaining more insight as well as, trying to offer more.
"Rome wasn't built in a single day".
No reputable firm will have a partnership with a casino without a license. Therefore, a casino license is the same basic thing as registering a company. But one license is not enough, you need to constantly develop the casino platform by adding new tools.
Of course and development doesn't begin or ends with partnership. Active publicity, upgrading of site, actively solving users complaints and looking for mean to create a more user friendly space all comes to play here.