Illegal gambling business is like an elephant in the china shop, which for some reason is overlooked by critics of legal gambling. It hinders everybody, creates a lot of risks, but for some reason they do not try to get rid of it or even criticize it. At the same time, the legal gambling business is constantly subjected to devastating criticism.
Imagine that you are playing a game with complicated rules and try your best to follow them. In addition to that, realizing certain shortcomings and gaps in these rules, you want to improve them and do everything in your power to ensure that their implementation benefits both the person who developed them and you. There is one more important element. In order to play this game, you pay hundreds of millions of hryvnias every year. As a result, all your initiatives, efforts and investments lead to constant public criticism.
At the same time, there are players in this game who don't pay to play, who ignore absolutely all the rules, prevent you from playing, and harm those who developed the rules. Their activity results in is excess profits, but there is no public criticism for "unsportsmanlike" behaviour.
This is exactly the situation currently in the legal gambling sector in Ukraine. Despite billions of revenue to the budget, more than UAH 1 billion in donations to special accounts for the Armed Forces of Ukraine and internally displaced persons, the preservation of jobs in wartime conditions, and other efforts, licensed gambling organizers continue to be criticized.
Despite all the achievements and extremely difficult working conditions, someone systematically and purposefully attacks legal gambling businesses. However, these "fair" experts and politicians completely ignore thousands of illegal gambling establishments and platforms that are actually the source of all the problems that ordinary citizens associate with gambling.
Observing this situation, logical questions arise: why not attack the black market with such zeal, why not help law enforcement agencies in their work against illegal businesses? Why not publicly criticize those who actually create problems for the state, for players and for legal businesses?
Given this context of the information space, it is really difficult to effectively promote the fight against illegal businesses. While others attack the legal gambling market with their own benefit, we at the Ukrainian Gambling Council continue to systematically report illegal gambling establishments and online platforms to the relevant authorities. The Commission for Regulating Gambling and Lotteries also does everything possible within its competence to fight against illegals. Recently, the Commission announced the blocking of more than 700 illegal web-sites related to the provision of gambling services.
To effectively fight against illegal businesses, it is necessary to use all available mechanisms to stop their illegal economic activities and shift the focus of public attention from criticism of legal organizers to criticism of the black market, which brings nothing but losses and problems to the state.