Ukraine’s PlayCity agency and the Ministry of Digital Transformation have reported the first-year results of the gambling and lottery market reform. The regulator says it restored state oversight, issued licenses, restarted legal lotteries and began building digital monitoring tools.
During the year, PlayCity issued 250 licenses to gambling organizers, B2B companies and lottery operators. Legal lotteries were relaunched for the first time in more than twelve years, with three operators receiving licenses.
From legalization to monitoring
The state says legal operators paid more than fourteen billion hryvnias in taxes, while license payments in the gambling sector reached about two billion hryvnias. Lottery operators also generated new payments after the market restart.
A major part of the reform is the fight against the shadow segment. Together with financial and law-enforcement institutions, PlayCity developed a system for tracking illegal websites and blocked more than four thousand one hundred gambling resources. It also submitted more than seven hundred social media accounts for blocking due to illegal advertising.
The technological core is the State Online Monitoring System, now in test operation. The agency wants to move toward data-driven regulation, where risks are seen before they become crises. For players, the reform adds limits on money and time in games, a new registry of restricted persons and special mechanisms to protect servicemembers from gambling addiction.
