“Websites associated with the “Budda” brand are listed in the register of prohibited domains. There are tens of thousands of pages in the government register.
Only a few days after the arrests did websites associated with the brand of a YouTuber known as Budda, make it into the Register of Domains Serving for Offering Gambling Games Against the Act. The websites www.bet-budda.pl and bet-budda.pl have been blocked, and a government domain warning appears in their place.
– You are trying to connect to an illegal website. Access to the site has been blocked. This domain has been added to the Register of domains used for offering gambling games against the Act on gambling games. The full list of domain names entered into the Register is available on the hazard.mf.gov.pl website- we read in the warning.
The government also explains that participating in illegal gambling is a tax offense, and participation in a foreign gambling game or a gambling game organized or operated in violation of the provisions of the Act on gambling games or the terms of a license or permit is subject to a fine of up to 120 daily rates. The participant in an illegally organized gambling game is also subject to a monetary penalty of 100% of the winnings obtained, without deducting the stakes paid.
In the opinion of the “Play Legally” Association, maintaining a government register of prohibited domains is a fiction that in no way changes the reality of the illegal gaming market in Poland. EY estimated its turnovers in 2023 in its report at 25.9 billion złotys.
There are currently over 47 thousand records in the state register of domain pages. Every day, several to several dozen domains offering Polish players an illegal, punishable by law activity are added. It should be noted that in many cases, a government warning does not appear, and there is a redirect to a cloned illegal service already under another domain- emphasizes Zdzisław Kostrubała, President of the Association for the Fight Against the Grey Zone of Games and Mutual Betting “Play Legally”.
The Association’s authorities want to draw attention to the fact that illegal, foreign gambling operators in Poland circumvent the operation of the register by automatically creating new “clone” domains in the system: xxxxxx1; xxxxx2;, xxxxx3, etc., which Poles can use until they are blocked.
In this way, Polish consumers, often unknowledgeable about the illegality of participating in online gambling, because not every internet user reads the relevant laws, are pursued by state authorities in Poland – adds Zdzisław Kostrubała.
It should be noted that criminal, foreign entities, unlike Polish players who account for 99 percent of the illegal market in Poland – are not subject to prosecution by tax authorities, the prosecutor’s office or police, even though in 2023 alone the budget of the Polish State lost to their activity – according to EY – 519 million złotys. Therefore, in the opinion of the members of the “Play Legally” Association, solutions already introduced by other European countries such as Italy, Denmark, Sweden, or Belgium, where the online gaming market has been regulated through the system of state concessions, should be introduced into the Polish legal system, thus eliminating legal fiction and eradicating criminal organizations from the market.”
Source: https://managerplus.pl/rzad-zablokowal-domeny-powiazane-z-marka-budda-26364
