Ukraine's state gambling regulator, PlayCity, has launched an innovative new tool in its escalating fight against the country's illegal online gambling
Ukraine’s state gambling regulator, PlayCity, has launched an innovative new tool in its escalating fight against the country’s illegal online gambling market. The agency has unveiled a publicly accessible system designed to track, identify, and facilitate the blocking of unlicensed casino and betting websites.
This is the first system of its kind in Ukraine. It empowers consumers by allowing them to enter a website’s domain to verify if it holds a licence, report suspected illegal sites directly to the regulator, and even file a complaint against any of the country’s 4,000 internet providers that fail to block prohibited domains. The system is a key part of the government’s announced action plan to bring the gambling market fully into the legal and taxed sphere.
This new technology isn’t an isolated initiative. It’s the public-facing component of a much broader, multi-agency “war” on the shadow economy. In early August, the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine (ESB) hosted a conference on combating illegal gambling, which brought together the heads of the ESB, PlayCity, and the Ministry of Digital Transformation to coordinate their actions.
The government’s aggressive stance is producing tangible results. The ESB reported it has initiated 80 criminal proceedings related to illegal gambling this year, charging 53 individuals and sending 16 cases to court. This enforcement has helped drive activity to the legal market, which contributed over UAH 9 billion (€185.4m) to the state budget in the first half of the year.
In a further bid to build public trust and ensure integrity, Ukraine has also taken the highly unusual step of forming an Anti-Corruption Expert Group for PlayCity with members selected via a public poll. The election, held on the country’s national digital services app Diya, saw over 57,000 people vote to select public activists for the new oversight body.
“Until now, Ukraine has not legally defined the criteria for selecting candidates for such advisory and consultative bodies,” the Ministry said, adding that the process ensured “validity, impartiality, and compliance… with established transparency standards.”
Ukraine is sending a clear and unambiguous signal to the global iGaming industry. The government is deploying a sophisticated, multi-pronged strategy that combines technology (the monitoring system), aggressive law enforcement (the ESB’s actions), and innovative governance (the public anti-corruption group) to clean up its market.
For licensed operators, this is a welcome development that promises a more level playing field. For illegal operators and their affiliates, the message is that their ability to operate in Ukraine is being systematically dismantled.
