The number of legal slots will fall from 43,306 in March to 9,000 at the beginning of 2027
The Federation of Gambling Organisers in Romania, FEDBET, has warned that the blocking of gambling authorisations will not make demand disappear, but will move it to channels that the state does not control.
It says that vulnerable people will remain without the protection mechanisms guaranteed by the legal framework, while accelerating the decline of an already regulated and controlled market.
At the level of the European Union, 72 per cent of the online gambling market is the black market. The turnover of the online gambling black market is almost €92bn, and the member states of the European Union have recorded losses in the amount of around €22bn during 2025 alone because of this.
The Federation is asking the Government and Parliament for urgent measures to keep the activity within the legal framework and supervised by the state until the adoption of the local decisions provided for by the ordinance.
It highlights that in an authorised gambling location, access is only allowed to adults, the identity of the players is verified, the activity is controlled by the National Gambling Office, and the operators have legal obligations to protect the players. In the case of an illegal operator, none of this exists, and the player has no authority to turn to. The most exposed are precisely minors and vulnerable people, whom the regulation was designed to protect. The state, in turn, loses any possibility of control because it does not know who is playing, how much is playing and where the money goes.
Alexandru Domșa, President of FEDBET, said: “The closure of an authorised location does not mean that people stop playing. A large part of them end up on sites without a license, where no one verifies age, there are no deposit limits or protection measures, and the state does not charge anything. The first thing that gets lost in a crash is player protection. In other words, the game doesn’t disappear; the control, instead, does.”
The blocking of gambling authorizations also has a direct social cost, the one borne by the employees in the industry. About 8,500 jobs have been affected so far. For those who have lost their jobs, the situation means a period of uncertainty and searches in an already pressured labour market, and for the state, an additional burden on public social protection systems.
At the same time, the Federation of Gambling Organisers in Romania warns that the loss of €750m lei in revenues from gambling taxes, included by the Ministry of Finance in the draft budget rectification for 2026, represents only part of the cost of blocking gambling authorisations in Romania and does not yet surprise the period in which its effects are accelerating.
The figure published by the Ministry of Finance includes exclusively the taxes specific to gambling, mainly the authorization fees. Other losses, such as those from income taxes, social contributions related to redundant jobs, administrative fees or corporate income tax of gambling organizers, are not taken into account.
It is also very important to mention that the figure reflects only the receipts from the first part of the year, before most authorizations expired and were not renewed due to the blockage of authorizations generated by the non-adoption of decisions by local authorities. The bulk of the declines begin in August and accelerate until the end of the year, with losses to reach approximately 320 million euros, according to the Federation’s estimates.
According to public data, the number of slot machines with a valid authorisation will fall from 43,306 in March to about 9,000 at the beginning of 2027. About 80 per cent of authorised gambling machines and locations will leave the market by the end of the year. On November 1, there were still 15,579 slot machines with valid authorisation. In the absence of decisions by local councils and new authorisations, on January 1, 2027, there will be 9,096 left, 42 per cent fewer in just two months.
The cause is purely administrative. Without decisions of the local councils, the mayoralties cannot issue local authorizations, and the ONJN cannot renew the exploitation authorizations. Less than 4% of the approximately 3,100 administrative-territorial units have adopted the decisions provided by GEO no. 7/2026, although the 60-day deadline expired as early as April. The requests made by the gambling industry to the municipalities have so far remained unanswered.
Domșa added: “The figure of the Ministry of Finance only shows what was lost before the authorisations began to expire en masse. The real cost will be seen in the coming months and does not stop at the taxes specific to this field: each job eliminated means contributions and taxes that the state no longer collects. We are not asking for any tax facility. We ask for only one thing: the exit from uncertainty, through the urgent adoption of transitional rules, so that operators who meet the legal conditions can operate until the adoption of local decisions. The Federation may at any time make available to the authorities all the data at its disposal, verifiable at any time.”
The Federation asks the Government and Parliament to urgently adopt these transitional rules, so that gambling operators that meet the legal conditions can operate until the adoption of local decisions.
The number of legal slots will fall from 43,306 in March to 9,000 at the beginning of 2027 The Federation of Gambling Organisers in Romania, FEDBET, has warned that the blocking of gambling authorisations will not make demand disappear, but will move it to channels that the state does not control. It says that vulnerable