PlayCity Blocks 4,100 Illegal Sites in Year One as Ukraine Tightens Enforcement

PlayCity, Ukraine’s state agency for gambling and lottery control, blocked more than 4,100 illegal gambling websites in its first year and collected over UAH988m in fines from gambling organisers. The agency issued 250 licences and worked with the Ministry of Digital Transformation to relaunch regulation across gambling and lottery sectors.

The 250 licences covered gambling organisers, B2B companies, gaming equipment and lottery operators. According to PlayCity head Hennadii Novikov, writing in RBC-Ukraine, the breakdown included 11 operator licences, 23 for B2B companies, 213 for gaming equipment and three for lottery operators. Gambling organisers paid more than UAH14bn in tax in 2025 and a further UAH3.48bn in Q1 2026, with licence payments reaching around UAH2bn.

Ukraine had gone more than 12 years without full state oversight of the lottery sector. That changed after PlayCity licensed three lottery operators, who paid more than UAH72m in licence fees and UAH74m in tax in Q1 2026.

PlayCity targeted illegal operators across three channels: domains, traffic and payments. The agency reduced the time from site detection to blocking to one day and built a dedicated tracking system to automatically identify mirror sites connected to previously blocked domains. This shifts the enforcement logic from reacting to individual sites to mapping networks of connected illegal operators.

The agency sent more than 700 social media accounts for blocking and established cooperation with Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Google, Viber and Twitch for advertising enforcement. PlayCity launched an online complaints tool for unlawful gambling ads and imposed around UAH80m in fines specifically for advertising violations. It also worked with the National Bank of Ukraine and the Economic Security Bureau to restrict illegal operators’ access to payment processing.

In 2026, PlayCity conducted seven planned and four unscheduled inspections after the government lifted a moratorium that had been in place since 2022. The agency restored 100% mandatory reporting from gambling organisers and introduced reporting requirements for lottery operators.

PlayCity launched the State Online Monitoring System in test mode in April, with 12 operators already connected and transmitting test data. The system can process more than 10,000 transactions per second and is built to scale further. PlayCity said it is in the final stage of preparing a tender for the second phase, which it plans to complete by the end of the year. The second phase will extend monitoring to gaming machine settings, game results and transactions involving gaming substitutes.

More than 3,000 people used PlayCity’s online self-exclusion tool in 2026 to restrict their access to legal gambling. The Ministry of Digital Transformation approved Ukraine’s first national strategy against gambling addiction, coordinating activity across dozens of state bodies over the next ten years. This is the part of the reform with the longest horizon: the self-exclusion register, financial limits and military personnel restrictions are the foundation, but the strategy signals that player protection is now a structural priority rather than a compliance footnote.

💡 TGJ Take

PlayCity has built the infrastructure to make unlicensed operation in Ukraine genuinely difficult rather than just technically illegal. The combination of one-day blocking, mirror site detection, payment restrictions via the National Bank and advertising enforcement across every major platform closes the gaps that illegal operators typically exploit. The UAH988m in fines from just 11 inspections also signals that enforcement is no longer symbolic.

For licensed operators, the more immediate issue is the State Online Monitoring System. Processing 10,000 transactions per second in real time means the state will have near-complete visibility into operations once the system moves out of test mode. Operators that have treated compliance as a documentation exercise will need to reassess that approach before the second phase goes live later this year.