Romania's National Gambling Office (ONJN) has taken a significant step in its fight against illegal gambling by blacklisting about 800 unlawful gambling sites. This action is one of its largest enforcement efforts to date and underscores a growing commitment to combatting the online black market.
This recent enforcement follows the earlier addition of approximately 370 sites during the current administration’s tenure, bringing the total of sites blacklisted under the existing leadership to around 1,180, which includes platforms such as Polymarket. Since its establishment in 2013, ONJN has blocked around 1,500 illegal gambling websites.
The surge in enforcement capabilities stems from the deployment of a new detection tool that identifies clone websites. These are platforms that function under various domains while sharing the same underlying infrastructure. This innovation enables the regulator to more effectively target illegal networks.
ONJN President Vlad-Cristian Soare emphasized that the black market represents a widespread problem across Europe, noting that more than 70% of online gambling activities occur with unlicensed operators. In response, Romania is reinforcing its legislation, enhancing digital monitoring, and investing in new technologies for oversight.
Recent legal reforms have empowered ONJN to mandate the removal of illegal online content. Additionally, the regulator is working on developing sophisticated monitoring tools in collaboration with the Romanian Digitalization Authority.
Despite still undergoing digital transformation, ONJN has already begun identifying suspicious transactions and instances of potential manipulation of gross gaming revenue (GGR). These findings were reported to the relevant authorities earlier this year.
