Tens of billions out of control turnover, nearly a billion in illegal revenue, and hundreds of millions of losses for the state – these are the conclusions from the latest report prepared by the global advisory services leader EY, commissioned by the Polish Association for the Elimination of Grey Area Gaming and Mutual Betting “Play Legally”.
According to EY’s estimates, the value of revenues in the grey area has grown by nearly 360 million zlotys in Poland in just five years and amounts to 1 billion and 37.5 million zlotys. The collected data indicates that the existence of a grey area brings significant economic and social consequences. These can manifest as a worse situation in the public finance sector, market competition disruption, institutional degradation, and weakened economic growth.
The grey area in the online casino market in Poland refers to games organized outside the casino belonging to the state monopolist – Totalizator Sportowo. Illegal online casino operators offer games to Polish players despite the ban on such activities by private entities.
“From our analysis, it results that the ways to combat illegal practices and reap multimillion-dollar profits from participation in the grey area of online casinos used by the state authorities are far from effective. It is necessary to modernize and adapt the tools to the methods used by the grey area entities. Many countries of the European Union provide models of effective fight, which have adequately regulated this market”, emphasizes Zdzisław Kostrubała, president of the Association “Play Legally”.
In addition to revenues, the size of the illegal market in Poland is also described by the turnover which is the sum of bets, placed by the players. According to EY experts, the volume of transactions recorded by illegal operators in 2023 amounted to approximately 25.9 billion.
The grey area in the online casino market in Poland includes services provided to Polish players by operators who do not comply with the ban on activities. Illegal entities do not pay taxes in Poland, which is associated with damage to the public finance sector in the form of lost tax revenues – comes from EY’s analysis.
The dynamics of increasing turnover and revenues of illegal entities demonstrated in the EY report, means that the state budget loses more than two and a half times the expenditures planned by the Ministry of Sports this year for implementing the “Sports Poland” program, which aims to develop local sports infrastructure, including the construction of swimming pools, pitches, tennis courts, or sports halls in small and medium-sized cities.
The growing grey area in the online casino market is linked to the consequences for the public finance sector in the form of ever higher losses of income from the gaming tax. In 2018, the value of lost revenues amounted to about 339 million PLN, and in 2023 – already about 519 million PLN, accounting for 11.5% of the total gaming tax revenues in this year – EY states in the report.
To estimate the value of the grey area over the Vistula, EY experts used a panel econometric model. It explains the revenues of the legal online casino market per adult in the population of a given country between 2003 and 2022. The model includes 20 European Union countries. The state monopoly in the online casino sector only applies in Poland, Finland, and Austria. In the vast majority of European countries – for example, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, or Belgium – the legality of entities operating in this market depends on obtaining state licenses.
Source: https://managerplus.pl/nielegalne-kasyna-internetowe-w-polsce-generuja-blisko-26-mld-zlotych-obrotu-rocznie-43345
