Until 2020, gambling advertising was illegal, as was the business itself. In August of that year, it was legalized, after which a surge in gambling advertising began in Ukrainian media.
According to the Institute of Mass Information (IMI), from June to October 2023, the share of hidden advertising in its favor in the news feeds of popular online media increased from 12.4% to 16.4%. The media experienced a sharp drop in advertising revenues during the war, and casinos offer very interesting conditions - they are ready to pay two to three times the market price as a premium for reputational risks for the advertising platform.
Aggressive advertising of the gambling business, which is now heard from every iron, has yielded results - according to the NBU, in 2023 Ukrainians lost about UAH 400 million daily in online casinos, or over UAH 12 billion per month. To put that in perspective, the gambling business paid about UAH 10 billion in taxes in 2023, which is less than Ukrainians lose in one month. At the same time, the total turnover of the gambling business increased almost 15 times per year and reached UAH 207 billion.
At the same time, after the start of the war, the Ukrainian gambling business shows that it helps the army and informs about it in every possible way through advertising. However, stories are breaking into the public space that the Ukrainian military have become almost the main customers of online casinos.
“In our unit, a fighter came across a casino advertisement on the Internet and went in to “indulge a little”. We receive 50-100 thousand hryvnias for combat duty. A week after receiving his salary, he was already going around borrowing money from his comrades. We looked at his card history, and it turned out that he lost 80 thousand in just one night. At the same time, he constantly repeats that he has the situation under control,” the head of the evacuation group from the Kupyansk direction told reporters.
“Pawnshops and the OLH website are filled with volunteer property. Gambling during martial law should be banned. Their taxes are offset by the broken lives of soldiers. No donations to online casinos will compensate for the losses they caused to the army,” wrote Junior Sergeant 59 OMPB Pavlo Petrichenko, who calls what is happening an epidemic of gambling.
People's Deputy Oleksiy Honcharenko claims that “9 out of 10 soldiers on the front line have problems with casinos or betting.”.
“Money is lost. Then they take out loans. And so on in a circle. This is a problem that is destroying the morale of the military right now. But in addition to this, it creates a problem for later. A person spent a year or two on the front line. They received conditionally from 60 to 150 thousand hryvnias there. Instead of buying housing, investing or simply saving money, they lost everything,” writes Goncharenko.
Pavlo Petrychenko proposes to introduce a register and verification of players during martial law, limiting users who receive salaries from military units. There is already a partial solution to this problem - Ukraine already has a Register of Gamblers - persons who are restricted from accessing gambling establishments and participating in gambling. According to the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries (KRAL), 3,871 persons have been included in the list over the three years of its existence. The vast majority - 87% of them - were included in the list in 2023.
However, 99% of people were included in the Register based on their own application for self-restraint. Only 1% of people were included in the Register based on the decision of the KRAIL - in cases where the application was filed by the drug addict's relatives. At the same time, no person was included in the Register based on a court decision.
For gambling addicts in Ukraine, only temporary bans on visiting gambling establishments are provided - for a period of six months to three years. After the expiration of the terms, the effect of these restrictions is automatically terminated. It should also be noted that in December 2023, Law 9422 was adopted, which prohibits issuing loans to gambling addicts who are included in the Register. However, this restriction is valid only if the list indicates that the person used credit funds for gambling.
