The Ukrainian legal gambling market has officially existed for only two years, but it has already faced numerous trials. In addition to unresolved regulatory and tax issues preventing its full development, it faces a wave of negative external factors. First, there was the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, it is the war with russia. However, despite these challenges, the market and CRGL still demonstrate high adaptability and efficiency.
The assessment of the performance of state authorities may be tricky, but there is one clear criterion demonstrating the benefits of “keeping” a certain institution by the State. We just need to look at the budget for that state authority and compare it to the revenues it generates.
By assessing the Commission for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries, we will see the regulator’s efficiency even in times of war. In 10 months of 2022, the Commission has generated UAH 856,502 million to the state budget only in the form of license fees. At the same time, only UAH 79,668 million was spent on its operation. In addition, in November, two more companies paid UAH 351,000 and UAH 648,000 in the form of license fees.
If we analyse the entire active period of CRGL, we will see that from January 2021 to October 2022, the total amount of budget revenues in the form of licenses amounted to UAH 2,435 billion, which is 91.62% more than the amount of maintenance costs over this period, UAH 204,215 million.
The above statistics prove that the Commission is an efficient manager of the legal gambling market, capable of performing its tasks even during the war. The presence of a state regulator is also a common practice for any civilized gambling market. The regulator makes the market rules of the game transparent and clear to domestic gamblers and foreign investors.
As part of the gambling market regulation, CRGL not only provides revenues to the state budget but also works on:
(1) ensuring fair play for all online and offline gamblers;
(2) developing mechanisms to prevent the spread of gambling addiction (ludopathy);
(3) ensuring compliance with the responsible gambling principles by all legal gambling operators;
(4) creating the image of the Ukrainian gambling sector in the international arena, in particular, to attract foreign investment and limit the presence of russian companies;
(5) developing legislative initiatives to facilitate the work of legal gambling operators during the war;
(6) implementing measures to fight against illegal gambling operators in cooperation with relevant public institutions.
If the positive trend in paying license fees continues, then by the end of this year, CRGL will reach the target revenues of UAH 1,189,704 from the gambling sector provided for by the state budget. Given that all these results must be achieved in highly challenging conditions and that tax draft law 2713-d has not yet been adopted, we still do not realize the true potential of the gambling market and CRGL as its regulator. And if ending the war is a complex military and political challenge, the relevant law may be adopted as soon as possible, giving the necessary push to an even more dynamic development of legal gambling in Ukraine.