Ігор Вишневський That's Life 11 September 2025, 15:53

Half of the gambling market operates in the shadows, and 90% of illegal casinos have Russian roots — study

The illegal segment of the gambling market accounts for between 39% and 53%, and 90% of all illegal casinos are of Russian origin.

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Half of the gambling market operates in the shadows, and 90% of illegal casinos have Russian roots — study

The illegal segment of the gambling market accounts for between 39% and 53%, and 90% of all illegal casinos are of Russian origin.

This is evidenced by the results of a study conducted by Kantar, Gradus, and Factum in August-September 2025, which is cited by the Association of Ukrainian Gambling Business Operators.

«The international company Kantar estimated the share of the illegal gambling market in Ukraine at 52,1%, Gradus at 39%, Factum at 53%. Unfortunately, the results turned out to be much worse than expected. If the legal market is approximately UAH 59.6 billion per year, then the illegal one, respectively, is from UAH 37.72 to 66.53 billion. Almost half of the market is in the shadows, while 90% of all illegal casinos are of Russian origin,» emphasized the president of the AUOGB, Oleksandr Kohut.

According to the survey, Ukrainians choose illegal online casinos due to a number of factors: speed of payouts; the ability to avoid paying taxes; ease of registration and anonymity; the ability to play using cryptocurrencies; the absence of age and behavioral restrictions (access for gambling addicts and teenagers under 21); the absence of betting limits.

The AUOGB claims that according to traffic analysis, about 25,000 Ukrainians switch to playing in unlicensed online casinos every quarter.

«An additional fundamental reason is that illegal operators have better conditions: they are not limited in advertising and marketing tools, while the advertising of legal operators is strictly regulated by law,» the association noted.

According to Oleksandr Kohut, the key problem in combating the «black» market is the failure of telecom service providers to comply with the decisions of regulators (NKEC, PlayCity, NSDC) regarding blocking and the complicated procedure for blocking illegal sites.

«Today, it takes at least 10 days to close a site, while illegal casino owners create mirror clone sites in 1–2 days,» the AUOGB adds.

According to Oleg Arestarkhov, vice-president of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Bureau, politicians in their rhetoric do not pay attention to the growth of the «black» market, but instead focus their efforts on criticizing the legal industry.

«We are faced with an endless barrage of completely unfounded accusations of alleged non-payment of taxes by individual operators. This is, in fact, a custom-made bullying of the „white“ industry, which pays 19–20 billion UAH in taxes every year,» he noted.

According to the AUOGB, the total revenue of the Ukrainian IGaming market in the first half of 2025 amounted to UAH 27.1 billion. According to the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, which was published on the TSK, the amount of taxes paid by the industry for 8 months of 2025 exceeded UAH 13 billion.

As dev.ua wrote, the day before , PlayCity blocked 22 Instagram accounts for advertising online casinos.

At the same time, the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting , in its official response to dev.ua’s request, noted that there are no rules yet that define the requirements, criteria, and mechanisms for distributing gambling advertising in online media.

"Mykhailo and the guys obviously played a not-so-cheap PR game by changing photos in "Diya"." Hetmantsev called the work of the Ministry of Digital Affairs and PlayCity on the online casino market monitoring system an unfortunate déjà vu."

PlayCity launches system for checking and complaining about illegal online casinos