Ukrainian Gaming Week 2020

[MissExposé]

Ukrainian Gaming Week 2020 will be organized by Smile-Expo international company on 11-12 March 2020.

UGW 2020 will gather everyone interested in the development of the Ukrainian gambling business. Industry experts will share their experience and working strategies, as well as discuss key steps necessary for market progress. Exhibitors will present their best practices that will help to launch a business successfully.

More about the event could be found at the official website: ugw.com.ua/en

 

[Joonas]

What's the Ukranian gambling market like? What's the size online/offline? Is it regulated for casinos? Is it regulated for affiliates?

 

[Moonlight Cat]

What's the Ukranian gambling market like? What's the size online/offline? Is it regulated for casinos? Is it regulated for affiliates?

1.) It will be regulated soon. New law project will be law soon. Now it is illegal.

2.) UA gambling market is't too profitable. But Ukraine is the biggest online gambling hub in Europe.
Are lot of affiliate gambling programs, gambling brands and affiliates based in Ukraine.
I am sure that in Ukraine more people involved in online gambling than in Malta.

3.) As you see now gambling is illegal in UA, so most operators based in UA don't accept UA players.
But from time to time law law enforcement agency do raids against online gambling companies.

 

[robbiebilliams]

In Ukraine, the first reading of the bill, allowing the issuance of licenses for online casinos, to work in Ukraine. And we are talking about issuing those very “regulated” licenses and creating a regulated Ukrainian online gambling market.

 

[robbiebilliams]

If the law is adopted in its current form, there will be several conditions. The main condition is the price of the license.

The price of a license to work in Ukraine for an online casino will be in terms of US dollars: $ 2,361,500 / ANNUALLY!

And this is just a license fee. In addition to it, you will have to pay all the relevant royalties by providers and payment systems, and from the remaining pay taxes. Apart from any non-official payments, from which, as we all understand, no one is safe.

 

[robbiebilliams]

I think it is unlikely that anyone will argue that in UA they won’t even sell licenses to anyone for $ 2,361,500. To a good person - they will sell it. They’re not very good at being checked for communications with the aggressor state. So the bill prescribes. Everything else is the tales of the Vienna Woods.

But even if without the tales of the Vienna Woods, starting from official figures only. The indicated amount is very high. This is almost twice the price of the UKGC regulated UK license. Despite the fact that the average income from the British and Ukrainian players is, to put it mildly, different.

 

[robbiebilliams]

In addition to online casinos, separate licenses for offline casinos will also be sold. That is, we can get the so-called “Bulgarian Variant” in Ukraine, when both offline and online casinos will belong to virtually one operator or one group of people.

 

[robbiebilliams]

In addition, license holders receive the exclusive right to purchase advertising in the media.

With very high probability, everything goes precisely to this scenario. With the sauce of withdrawing the gambling business from the shadows, there will be a cleansing from the mass of small competitors and the consolidation of all Ukrainian offline and online in the hands of one or more players.

What will this mean for Ukrainian players?

First of all, the protection of Ukrainian players from various kinds of fraud will increase, this is certainly a plus. But at the same time, for players from UA the possibility of choice will be sharply reduced. As soon as regulated gambling in Ukraine takes effect, it is very likely that all brands with an MGA license will abandon the Ukrainian players. Curacao is likely to be able to accept players from UA, but again, with a very high probability, Ukrainian Internet providers will be obliged to block casinos that accept players from Ukraine, but without a Ukrainian license. With the same high probability it will be more problematic to make payments in favor of unlicensed casinos.

 

[robbiebilliams]

A self-exclusion system in regulated casinos will naturally work. And that is a plus. The downside is that information on the deposits and withdrawals of each player will be available to the state, which may mean problems for people with unofficial incomes that are much higher than official ones. Casinos flying the flag of Curacao do not share such information with the Ukrainian or Russian authorities.

Our blog will monitor further developments in the legalization of online gambling in Ukraine.

Thanks for attention. In fact, we ourselves still have a lot of questions about what happened, and we will be glad to hear your comments.

 

[Joonas]

Thanks a lot for taking the time and telling comprehensively about the market! Any ideas or estimates about the market potential, the monetary size of the market?

 

[Moonlight Cat]

Thanks a lot for taking the time and telling comprehensively about the market! Any ideas or estimates about the market potential, the monetary size of the market?

Quite low. First of all - big competition and low margin. Ukraninan market is the same as Russian. Are lot of online casinos, including are lot of casinos with fake software. 99% of Ukranians speak Russian fluent. For majority

About regulation proccess. I don't think that after regulation new regulation casinos will needed affiliate program. As Russian and Ukranian Newspapers wrote, this one and only reason for regulation is give monopolisation to several operators that affiliate with each other.

Newspapers suspect Pari Match - the big operators, that "regulation" is they idea.

For Majority of people in Ukraine - Russian language is native. Official language is Ukraine, but in most citys, include capital Russian is everyday and native language. So Ukranian visitors may read Russian affiliates sites e.t.c.

So every Russian language affiliate sites is your competitor in Ukranina market.

p.s. sorry for my English, many mistakes.

 

[Nocturnalant]

Ukraninan market is the same as Russian

Only the absence of RKN-like bans and much lower popularity of DMCA/DDoS attacks makes a huge difference between UA and RU markets

 

[robbiebilliams]

Only the absence of RKN-like bans and much lower popularity of DMCA/DDoS attacks makes a huge difference between UA and RU markets

Absolutely right! The game market in Ukraine is a dark horse, but webmasters in Ukraine are now some of the best in the world. And how development will go in the near future is not yet clear. I think that the Ukrainian market is not suitable for attracting players, but it is very profitable for investing in specialists. IMHO

 

[robbiebilliams]

Thanks a lot for taking the time and telling comprehensively about the market! Any ideas or estimates about the market potential, the monetary size of the market?

The Ukrainian market is relatively small in terms of the presence of potential players, but there is a chance of an economic explosion in a very short period of time, so here, as in startups, you need to believe in success!