Poland’s illegal online gambling market: 58,000 blocked domains, 27 billion zlotys in annual turnover, and Russian tools in the stack

TVP Info has published an investigation into illegal online gambling in Poland, and the numbers are the part PSPs and payment teams will care about first: nearly 58,000 blocked addresses in the Finance Ministry’s register, about 1,000 new ones added each month, and an estimated annual turnover of more than 27 billion zlotys. The operational takeaway is simple: the market is large, fast-moving, and built to keep taking payments even when the domain gets blocked.

1. According to the report, Poland’s Finance Ministry register now contains almost 58,000 blocked addresses, with around 1,000 new entries added every month. TVP Info also says players were able to bypass national blocks in about 25 seconds, which is a useful reminder that domain blocking alone does not stop deposits.
2. Experts cited in the piece estimate the annual turnover of illegal casinos and bookmakers at more than 27 billion zlotys, or about $7.4 billion. For comparison, the only legal online casino in the country belongs to the state-owned Totalizator Sportowy.
3. Investigators from the organization led by Ukrainian lawyer Alexei Kuprienko accessed GGPoker from Poland via a mirror site and made a deposit using a European card. That detail matters because it shows how quickly a blocked brand can still reach local players through alternative front doors and ordinary card rails.
4. The report says code analysis of several illegal casinos showed the use of Russian services, including Yandex.Metrica and payment gateways. For PSPs, acquiring teams, and fraud analysts, that is the kind of signal that can show up in due diligence, traffic attribution, or transaction monitoring long before a platform admits where its backend is coming from.
5. TVP Info also described acquisition channels used to bring in Polish players: affiliate agencies, including ones linked to Pin-Up; influencers, with the tax office in Opole reviewing 41 cases involving bloggers advertising illegal casinos; and qualifying tournaments for Polish players for competitions in Bratislava, including through the ClubGG app.

The lawyers quoted in the studio said the domain register introduced in 2017 has become less effective over time because site clones appear faster than they can be blocked. For payment providers, that is the real operating environment: not a single site to shut down, but a rotating set of mirrors, affiliates, and payment touchpoints that can outpace static enforcement.