Established online gambling operators are turning their attention eastward. Central and Eastern Europe — long considered a secondary priority — is now firmly on the expansion map for a growing number of iGaming companies.
The reasons are not hard to identify. UK, German, and Swedish markets have seen player acquisition costs rise sharply over recent years. Regulatory pressure has followed suit, and operators in those territories are feeling the squeeze on margins. Romania, Poland, and the Czech Republic have started to fill the gap — not as loosely governed alternatives, but as markets where licensing frameworks have matured to the point of offering genuine operational predictability.
Romania’s Licensed Market Continues to Mature
Romania is worth examining in some detail because it illustrates what market development in the region can actually look like when a national regulator takes a consistent approach. The country’s gambling authority, ONJN, has been issuing online licences since 2015, which is early by regional standards. They have spent the intervening years building out their compliance infrastructure rather than simply collecting fees.
That consistency matters to operators. Several internationally active platforms now hold ONJN licences and run dedicated local products for Romanian players. The live dealer segment has been a primary focus here. We are seeing major brands investing significant resources in studio space and native-speaking dealers to capture market share, with operations like the NetBet live casino Romania product serving as prime examples of this shift. This pattern of building a locally licensed and adapted platform, rather than relying on a cross-border grey-market product, has become a solid template for how compliant operators approach their CEE entry.
Why Compliance Has Become a Competitive Advantage
There is a certain irony in the current landscape: stricter regulation, which operators once lobbied against, has increasingly become something larger players quietly welcome. When a regulator raises compliance standards — around responsible gambling measures, advertising rules, AML obligations — it raises costs for everyone. But for operators who already have the infrastructure to meet those requirements, higher barriers to entry thin out the competition.
Romania has moved in exactly this direction. ONJN has progressively tightened its requirements, and the effect has been to channel player activity toward licensed platforms and away from unlicensed alternatives. For operators willing to make the investment in local compliance, the long-term picture looks relatively stable — which is, in the current European regulatory climate, not something to take for granted.
Mobile Growth Has Changed the Equation
Infrastructure improvements across Romania and Poland have quietly shifted the math on live casino viability. Mobile broadband speeds improved noticeably over the past two years, and smartphone ownership continued to climb across both markets. The practical result: live dealer products that once demanded a stable desktop connection now stream without issue on a handset. That shift matters for an industry increasingly built around mobile access — it widens the potential player base and clears a hurdle that had kept live casino uptake lower than operators would have liked.
The Numbers Behind the Trend
The broader European gambling sector posted an estimated €123.4 billion in gross gaming revenue during 2024, but it is the digital split that warrants attention. The online gambling sector accounted for roughly €47.9 billion of that total and showed strong year-on-year growth. This expansion was heavily concentrated in online channels, while land-based revenue held relatively steady across most markets. Projections for 2025 and 2026 suggest this trend will only accelerate, with licensed operators expected to capture a growing share as regulators step up enforcement against unlicensed platforms.
CEE accounts for a smaller portion of total European revenue in absolute terms, but the growth rate tells a different story. Disposable incomes are rising, the player base skews younger than in Western markets, and digital payment adoption has accelerated. Operators moving into the region now are positioning for where things stand in a decade, not simply chasing current volume.
What Comes Next
CEE entry carries real complexity. Licensing procedures differ from one country to the next. Language localization, player protection requirements, and advertising rules all vary — sometimes significantly. Companies that approach the region as a single undifferentiated market tend to find out quickly why that assumption is costly.
The ones making progress are those that have taken the compliance investment seriously — building relationships with local regulators, adapting their platforms to local expectations, and accepting that long-term market presence requires more than planting a flag and waiting for revenue to follow. For those operators, Central and Eastern Europe represents one of the more credible growth stories in a European market that, elsewhere, is running low on easy wins.