2024 was an eventful year for the legal gambling market. The introduction of strict restrictions on advertising, still unclear tax legislation, constant attacks from illegal operators, loss of assets and lack of external investment - all of this certainly did not add to optimism. However, despite this, the legal gambling market has demonstrated resilience and fulfilled its obligations to the state in terms of licence fees and taxes.
Any results are best summed up with the help of numbers. It is clear that the final data will be available a little later, but we can already say that the gambling business has significantly supported the implementation of the state budget this year.
According to the state budget plan for 2024, the state was supposed to receive UAH 1.475 billion in licence fees from legal gambling. As of 16.12.2024, legal organisers have already transferred almost UAH 1.677 billion in licence fees, which is 13.6% more than planned. This figure can easily increase by several percent by the end of the year.
Another significant source of state budget revenues is taxes paid by legal gambling organisers. In 11 months of 2024, they transferred over UAH 16 billion, which is 1.7 times more than last year. Given the current dynamics of tax payments, it is likely that by the end of the year, the total amount will reach almost 17.5 billion.
Thus, total budget revenues from legal gambling this year can be estimated at UAH 19-19.5 billion. For comparison, this is, for example, almost half of the amount allocated by the government for the purchase of UAV systems for the frontline in 2025. Undoubtedly, such a "donation" is impressive.
At the same time, it should be understood that the growth in tax revenues is occurring despite the market's lack of regulation. The regulatory framework that is being introduced is at best limitedly optimistic and still does not fully address the pressing issues.
Take the recently adopted draft law 9256-d, which, among other things, was intended to regulate gambling advertising. This law introduced advertising restrictions for legal gambling, but did not regulate the issue of advertising lotteries that illegally imitate gambling. This means, for example, that a legal online casino gambling organiser that has a licence and pays taxes is not allowed to advertise its services, while an illegal lottery operator that imitates the same online casino on its platform is free to advertise.
The uncertainty over advertising rules is not limited to the tax legislation, which is not streamlined still even at the level of terminology definition, the state online monitoring system (SOM) is not working, and there are no significant results in the fight against illegal operators, especially in the online segment.
2024 was definitely not an easier year for legal gambling than the previous 2 years of war. However, legal organisers have shown remarkable resilience and ensured the payment of licence fees and taxes, which has already exceeded the planned figures. Despite all the challenges, legal gambling has survived and brought billions of dollars to the state budget. This means only one thing - if favourable regulatory conditions are created, this industry will be able to bring many times more benefits to the state in terms of budget revenues and investment. I hope that next year we will at least come closer to creating them.
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