Ukraine’s newly established gambling regulatory body, PlayCity, has published its comprehensive first-year performance report, documenting significant modernization achievements across licensing administration, transaction tracking, and anti-fraud enforcement.
Operating in close technical coordination with the Ministry of Digital Transformation, the report marks the first formal annual review publicized since PlayCity officially dissolved and replaced its regulatory predecessor, KRAIL.
Launching the DSOM Centralized Tracking Network
According to the official Monday filing, PlayCity successfully processed and issued exactly 250 legal licenses over the past twelve months, delivering over ₴569 million ($12.8 million) in direct application fees straight to the sovereign state budget. The regulatory allocation includes 11 comprehensive permissions issued to consumer-facing B2C gambling operators, three structural licenses delivered to lottery operators, and 213 certifications granted to upstream gaming equipment manufacturers.
The lottery reactivation is particularly notable, injecting approximately ₴72 million ($1.62 million) in upfront fees into the state system after the domestic lottery market spent more than a decade in a state of full legal suspension. Data indicators show that tax yields from licensed lottery brands alone surpassed ₴74 million during the first quarter of 2026, while total first-year tax revenues collected from general gambling organizers reached an estimated ₴14 billion, backed by an auxiliary ₴2 billion generated via personal income tax fields bound to the gaming sector.
Concurrently, PlayCity executed an aggressive enforcement track against grey-market networks, levying over ₴988 million in administrative fines for operational violations alongside ₴80 million in specialized financial penalties targeting illegal marketing campaigns. The agency collaborated with telecommunications providers to block more than 4,100 illegal gambling websites and sever 700 social media profiles broadcasting unapproved ads, optimizing back-office filters to compress the required domain-blocking window down to just 24 hours.
To build long-term data transparency, the agency successfully deployed the State Online Gambling Monitoring system (DSOM), a centralized, near-real-time transaction tracking network that maps all user bets, payout ratios, and financial returns. To mitigate social harms, PlayCity processed over 3,000 restriction requests in 2026 and collaborated with the Ministry of Defense to build automated login blocks that instantly cross-reference player attempts against active military rosters to keep military personnel completely barred from digital casino lobbies.
Building a Framework for Data-Driven Regulation
Gennedy Novikov, Head of PlayCity, stated that the deployment of the DSOM network provides the state with high-capacity oversight tools to resolve structural tracking vulnerabilities:
“This year was about creating infrastructure that the state actually did not have. We are building data-driven regulation – a model in which decisions are made based on data. For such a dynamic market, this is critical. The state should not catch up with problems, but see risks before they become a crisis.”
