The post on the Telegram channel of journalist Yevhen Plinsky “Dirty Games” marked the beginning of a kind of “Second Great War” in the Ukrainian gambling market. The “First Great War” started with the beginning of Russian aggression in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and ended in March 2023 with the loss of the long-time gambling leader Parimatch. On March 10, 2023, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine imposed sanctions against it for 50 years, which effectively stopped the company’s operations in Ukraine.
The initiator of the “second war on gambling” was the gambling brand Favbet, which may become a monopolist in gambling in Ukraine. And it can be understood, because the “prize” is tens of billions of hryvnias annually, and this is only the legal part of it.
The beginning of the war for the gambling market
The official start of the “Second Great War for Gambling” in Ukraine can be considered 10 hours and 14 minutes on April 18, 2024. This is the date of a post on the Telegram channel of journalist Yevhen Plinsky.
In his post, the journalist noted that the Financial Monitoring Service blocked the accounts of VBet and Pin-UP gambling brands for a total of UAH 2.86 billion for 30 days. Interestingly, the website of the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine does not contain such news, but the journalist’s message was picked up by many media outlets. However, as it turned out, the morning report was only the “first swallow” – then came a post about the problems of the Cosmolot brand, and again Pin-UP. In his posts, the journalist directly accused VBet and Pin-UP (especially the latter) of having ties to Russia, money laundering, and terrorist financing. However, he was not alone in this, for example, the anonymous Telegram channel Joker also published two posts on April 18 accusing Slotoking, 777, and SlotsCity of working with Russia. But in fact, there were much more such messages in the information space, and they started earlier. Perhaps, the harbinger of the “second great war for gambling” in Ukraine was the petition of Pavlo Petrychenko, a soldier of the 59th Mech Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, to restrict the operation of online casinos in Ukraine due to the epidemic of gambling addiction in the Armed Forces. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised to look into it, and Pavlo Petrychenko died on April 16.
Participants of the gambling war and its initiator
Judging by the mentions in the information space, the conflict in the gambling market will affect all its main participants, which is why it can be called the “great war for gambling” or simply “Great Redistribution”. “In 2023, Komentarii conducted a review of the Ukrainian gambling market, and all of its leaders that we wrote about then were involved in the new war. To be more precise, almost all of them. These are Cosmolot, Pin-UP, VBet, and Slotoking, 777, and SlotsCity that are not in the TOP 5. Out of the Big Five online casinos that control about 85% of the legal gambling turnover in Ukraine, only No. 2 – Favbet TM – was not mentioned in the great war for gambling that started on April 18. And this is not surprising at all, since, according to the sources of Komentarii, they are the initiators of the new conflict, with the quite understandable goal of gaining as many positions as possible and becoming not the first, but unattainable. And this position is quite understandable, because according to official data alone, the turnover of the gambling business in Ukraine is more than UAH 55 billion per year.
A big prize in the gambling market
Almost 55 billion hryvnias – this is how much the Top 10 most successful gambling companies earned in 2023 according to the Opendatabot Index. And this is only the official income of companies, although many of them, if not all, have numerous betting “mirror” sites that accept bets that are not taken into account in their tax reporting. It is clear that in such conditions, any major war for gambling will pay off, as even 1% of the gambling market won from a competitor is about UAH 550 million. For example, Cosmolot TM accounts for approximately 51% of the market or UAH 27.95 billion by the end of 2023, Favbet – 17.8% and UAH 9.8 billion, respectively, Pin-UP – 6.6% and UAH 3.6 billion. Mass media, courts, law enforcement are tools of the great war for gambling In the course of the great confrontation for players’ money, many methods are used, but basically, the tactics can be reduced to two technologies:
– information
– law enforcement and maritime.
We wrote about the information tactics of warfare and even preparations for it above – preparations for the need to change something in the gambling market began in March, and it became most evident on April 18. Regarding the tactics of using law enforcement officers, Commentary does not assume that the actions of law enforcement or courts in the gambling market are ordered by someone, but some facts may lead to certain conclusions. Back in November 2023, Pin-UP (No. 3 according to Opendatabot) was deprived of its license to operate due to suspicions of being connected to the Russian Federation. The Kyiv District Administrative Court confirmed the legality of this decision. On April 12, it became known that Russian citizen Dmitry Punin, who is said to be the owner of the Russian Pin-UP, was detained in Cyprus. The gambling market leader Cosmolot started having problems with law enforcement in February 2024.
Back then, the Bureau of Economic Security reported the arrest of 700 ml of
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
