What does the gambling market expect after the emergence of a new regulator?

On 1 April, a new gambling regulator is to start operating in Ukraine, replacing the Commission for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries (CRGL). According to the authors of the relevant law, the new regulator will systemise and speed up the issuance of licences, reducing the role of the human factor in this process. The regulator will also be vested with broad powers to monitor the activities of legal organisers, including in the field of advertising.

Only time will tell whether the emergence of a new gambling regulator will prove effective for the gambling market in Ukraine, but legal organisers should already prepare for the changes that will be introduced with its emergence. Let's take a closer look at the key ones and their potential impact on the market.

1. Automatic procedure for issuing and revoking licences. Licences will be issued automatically based on the analysis of data about the company that has applied from a number of registers. If this analysis shows that the company is "clean", the licence will be granted automatically. The same will be true for the revocation of licences - if the registers contain information about violations of licence conditions or links to russia, etc., the company will automatically lose its licence.

The main purpose of this approach is to reduce the influence of the human factor on decisions to issue/revoke licences, and thus reduce corruption risks. This means that now the decision will not be made by the commission.

2. Establishment of a monitoring and analytics department that will oversee media and social media advertising for legality and compliance with the law. Again, modern technologies with elements of artificial intelligence will be used to monitor, detect and block illegal gambling advertising. According to the Ministry of Digital Transformation, this will automate the control of illegal advertising on the Internet, quickly block "mirrors", etc. This should improve control over the advertising activities of legal gambling organisers and make it impossible for illegal operators to advertise.

3. Deepening cooperation with global IT corporations and search engines. Actually, this area of work was initiated by CRGL, which in a short time was able to implement several effective initiatives to combat illegal gambling advertising in cooperation with Meta (Facebook/Instagram). The new regulator plans to expand the scope of this partnership and involve such companies as Google, Apple and other IT giants.

It is clear that the new regulator will significantly systematise discipline in the market. At the moment, it seems that the licensing procedure will become faster, while control over compliance with the law will become more technical. This, in particular, gives hope that the quality of the fight against illegal operators will improve, and thus the working conditions for legal organisers will improve. At the same time, the reliance on absolute digitalisation of processes increases the risk of cyberattacks, so it is hoped that the new state regulator will be able to ensure the data security of all market participants at a high level.