The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine has proposed changing the gambling and tax legislation, as a package of amendments to the Gambling Act and the Tax Code has...
Ukraine’s gambling regulator and YouTube to ban illegal ads
Ukraine’s gambling regulator, PlayCity, has launched a new cooperation with YouTube in an effort to remove gambling advertisements that violate state law.
The initial measures have already led to the shutdown of YouTube channels and the removal of prohibited content, as reported on the regulator’s official Telegram channel.
PlayCity has banned a YouTube channel with more than 3,000 subscribers that was promoting gambling, while another video from a channel with 133,000 subscribers advertising online casinos was removed as well.
PlayCity wrote:
“We continue systematic work on cleaning the information space from illegal gambling advertising.”
Estimates show that the size of the illegal gambling market in Ukraine is between $840 million and $1.5 billion annually, with a lot of the traffic coming from video hosting and social networks, additionally, in January 2026, PlayCity and the Ministry of Digital Affairs of Ukraine blocked 80 TikTok accounts and launched enforcement actions against multiple YouTube channels.
Meanwhile, YouTube continues to be one of the main platforms for attracting gambling traffic because of the difficulties connected to moderating Ukrainian-language content.
Ukraine’s Supreme Court has ruled that displaying gambling ads on outdoor media platforms will constitute restricted advertising.The highest court in Ukraine reviewed...
