Gambling revenue across CIS countries varies by up to 1,000x
Analytics platform Blask has published a report on the gambling market across 11 CIS countries, from Russia to Kyrgyzstan. The headline finding: the gap between the regional leader and the smallest market, based on the competitive earnings benchmark (CEB), reaches a factor of 1,000.
An important disclaimer applies to all figures in the report: the data covers licensed and offshore brands tracked by Blask using public signals, but does not include the shadow segment. The scale of that invisible portion of the market may be enormous: according to Grand View Research, the total volume of unregulated gambling globally reached $5.9tn in 2025.
A note on terminology
Blask explains that CEB is not an official financial metric but a modelled estimate of how much a market should be generating based on its influence, competitive position and audience reach. It is calculated using BAP (Brand’s Accumulated Power, the share of market attention held by a brand) and APS (Accumulated Player Share, the potential for new customer acquisition).
Russia: the region’s largest market
Russia leads by a significant margin, ranking fourth in the world by CEB. Its CEB is estimated at between $6.10bn and $20.15bn. Russia has 179 active brands, while its nearest competitor, Ukraine, trails by almost fivefold in CEB and has roughly half as many operators.
Scale, however, does not guarantee control. Russia remains the most offshore-dependent market in the region: Blask estimates that 43 per cent of projected revenue still flows to unlicensed brands. A shift only became visible from mid-2025 onwards, when the closure of payment service Qiwi Bank and legislation on the monitoring of drop accounts restricted the funding channels available to offshore operators. More recently, a faster domain-blocking mechanism has been added: the Federation Council reduced the timeframe for issuing a domain-blocking order from 5 days to 2.
The largest licensed brand in the entire region also operates in Russia: bookmaker Fonbet, with a CEB of $1.92bn.
From offshore to licensed
Targeted state intervention is more effective than relying on players to migrate voluntarily to licensed operators, as four markets demonstrate.
Georgia has historically been the CIS’s most fully regulated market, with 98 per cent of turnover held by licensed operators and 122 per cent growth over the past 6 years. The top three brands, bookmakers Adjarabet, Crystalbet and Crocobet, have remained unchanged for six years. Georgia has established a licensing system from the outset rather than fighting an already entrenched grey market.
Belarus took a different route but reached a similar outcome: the licensed segment’s share rose from 22 per cent in 2021 to 95 per cent following a mass blocking of offshore brands in 2023, with bookmaker BET.ERA stepping in to fill the gap left by departing operator Parimatch.
Armenia, one of the oldest markets in the region, with gambling legal since 2004, is also almost entirely within the licensed segment, at 95 per cent, with growth of 620 per cent over six years.
Kazakhstan demonstrates how quickly even a technical measure can achieve results: in 2023, authorities simplified the algorithm for blocking mirror sites, cutting the blocking period to a single day, and virtually eliminating the offshore segment, pushing the licensed share to 91 per cent. The market leader, bookmaker OlimpBet, has remained unchanged since.
Legalisation without licences
Not every legalisation automatically produces a legal market. Uzbekistan formally permitted online gambling in January 2025, but has yet to issue a single licence. The market remains 100 per cent offshore and is the most fragmented in the region, with 17 brands accounting for 1 per cent or more of market share each. Demand exists; it simply has no licensed destination.
Kyrgyzstan legalised gambling in 2022 but restricted it to foreign nationals, thereby bypassing precisely the audience that generates real demand. The outcome is predictable: the sole licensed brand, bookmaker TopBet, is barely visible against the leading offshore trio of bookmakers Melbet and 1xBet and betting and online casino operator 1win.
Bans that do not work
Azerbaijan and Tajikistan are running a more radical experiment, opting for outright prohibition rather than partial legalisation, and both are producing the same result. The Azerbaijani market grew 235 per cent over six years despite an active ban on online casinos, with the offshore share never dropping below 30-40 per cent.
Tajikistan follows the same trajectory: sevenfold growth over four years under a comparable prohibition, even though the market remains one of the smallest in the world by volume, ranked 123rd out of 135 countries tracked by Blask.
In both countries, the same operator meets demand: bookmaker Parimatch, working through local partners (in Tajikistan, bookmaker Formula55, with the two together accounting for 86 per cent of market share). Together with Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, these four markets form a clear pattern: demand for gambling in the region proves elastic not to legislation but to the availability of a convenient legal alternative. Where there is none, offshore becomes the only provider.
Ukraine: shifting leaders
Ukraine is the second-largest market in the region, with a CEB of $1.48bn to $3.61bn and 91 brands available to players. It is also the most fragmented among the larger markets: the CEB leader, online casino operator Slotor777, controls just 25.8 per cent of market attention. That fragmentation is not a sign of weak regulation but a side effect of it. Over several years, former leaders, online casino operator Pin Up and bookmaker Parimatch, exited the market entirely, replaced by esports betting platform GG.BET and the aforementioned Slotor777. Where no brand can establish a lasting position, competition continuously reshuffles the market leaders to the benefit of players.
Leaving the licensed market, however, does not mean disappearing entirely: in April 2026, law enforcement uncovered a network of illegal online casinos with a turnover of €97m that had continued operating after their licences were revoked.
Moldova sets records
Moldova demonstrates that a state monopoly and explosive market growth are not mutually exclusive, provided the state has the capacity to invest in its own product. The market grew nearly 40-fold in five years, up 3,870 per cent, the highest figure among all 11 countries in the report. State lottery operator Loteria Națională holds 68 per cent of CEB (91 per cent when the two other largest brands are included). This combination of rapid growth and high concentration is rare.
A similar, if less pronounced, structure exists in Belarus (67.2 per cent held by BET.ERA) and Kazakhstan (56.9 per cent held by OlimpBet). In all three cases, the cost of high concentration is that the stability of the entire market depends on a single operator.
Key figures from the report
A single “post-Soviet” gambling market template clearly does not exist, and this is not a statistical anomaly. It is a direct consequence of countries with a common history making fundamentally different regulatory choices over the past few years.
Three facts illustrate the region’s complexity most clearly:
- Russia leads by volume, outpacing Ukraine by 4.8 times, while simultaneously remaining the most offshore-dependent market in the region, with 43 per cent of revenue flowing to unlicensed brands. Market size and the degree of legalisation do not move in step.
- Moldova holds records both for growth rate (40-fold in five years) and concentration (68-91 per cent held by the top brands). The two, it turns out, are entirely compatible.
- Finally, two brands set the benchmark on either side of the market: the region’s largest offshore operator, 1win, generates an estimated $909m per year according to Blask, while the largest licensed operator, bookmaker Fonbet, generates approximately $1.9bn.
This article was first published on the Russian SiGMA News page on 6 July 2026.
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