How Does Romania Target the Online Gambling Black Market?

Romania targets its online gambling black market through a combination of ISP-level site blocking, license enforcement against operators that breach rules, and — for the first time — direct state funding for problem-gambling treatment. In its 2025–2026 mandate year, the National Office for Gambling (ONJN) reported blacklisting more than 300 unlicensed gambling sites, issuing over 60 illegal content removal orders, and revoking around 60 licenses, while launching a €5 million treatment fund called Conștient și Liber ("Aware and Free").

For licensed operators, this is a meaningful shift. Romania has historically had one of Europe's larger grey markets, and channelisation — the share of betting that flows through licensed operators — has been a persistent concern. The 2026 enforcement push narrows the gap.

What ONJN Actually Did

The ONJN's first-year report frames the work in three layers:

• Site blocking. More than 300 unlicensed .com and offshore-branded domains were added to the national blacklist, which Romanian ISPs are required to enforce at the DNS level.
• Takedown orders. Over 60 illegal content removal notices were sent to platforms and intermediaries hosting unlicensed gambling content, including affiliate sites and ad networks.
• License action. Approximately 60 licenses were revoked for operators that breached technical, AML, or responsible-gambling rules — a notably higher pace of enforcement than in prior years.
• Treatment funding. The €5M Conștient și Liber programme is Romania's first centrally funded gambling-harm treatment scheme, paid for from a levy on licensed operators.

A separate court ruling during the same period upheld ONJN's earlier decision to keep prediction-market operators (including Polymarket) blocked in Romania, reinforcing that event-contract products are treated as unlicensed gambling under Romanian law.

Why This Matters for Operators

For licensed operators in Romania — and for B2B suppliers feeding them content, payments, or risk tools — the practical effects are concrete:

1. Channelisation should improve. Each blacklisted domain that actually loses traffic is players (and GGR) returning to licensed operators. UK and Italian data over the past five years show site blocking is most effective when paired with payment-blocking and search/ad delisting; Romania is moving toward that combined model.
2. Compliance bar rises. With 60 license revocations in a year, the cost of getting AML, RG, or technical compliance wrong is no longer theoretical. Operators are tightening internal audit, KYC, and self-exclusion integrations.
3. Affiliate risk. Takedown orders increasingly hit affiliate sites that promote offshore brands. Operators relying on Romanian affiliate traffic need to vet partners' offshore exposure.
4. Levy economics. The treatment fund is paid from licensee contributions. Operators should expect this to become a recurring line item, not a one-off.

How Site Blocking Actually Works in Romania

ONJN publishes a blacklist of domains. Romanian ISPs are obliged to block DNS resolution for those domains. In parallel, payment service providers are required to refuse transactions to and from blacklisted operators, and advertising platforms must remove paid promotion.

The model has gaps — VPN usage, mirror domains, and crypto rails — but each layer added (DNS, payments, ads, app stores) materially raises the friction for a casual unlicensed user. The 300+ domains blocked in 2025–2026 reflect ongoing cat-and-mouse against operators rotating to new mirrors.

How Romania Compares

Romania is now closer to the Italian/Spanish enforcement model than to lighter-touch markets.

What to Watch Next

The next signals operators should track:

• Whether ONJN publishes channelisation data showing licensed-market share gains
• Expansion of takedown orders to crypto-rail offshore operators
• The treatment fund's outcomes data — regulators across Europe are watching to see whether levy-funded treatment changes problem-gambling prevalence
• Any extension of the prediction-market ban to cover newer event-contract structures

For operators building Romania strategies, the underlying message is straightforward: enforcement has moved from intermittent to continuous, and the cost of operating outside the licensed perimeter is rising.

Adkuu provides B2B intelligence-layer infrastructure that helps licensed iGaming operators in regulated markets like Romania improve channelisation through better personalization, cross-product engagement, and real-time player risk scoring — without replacing existing platform components.

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Last verified: April 2026