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Several leading sportsbooks online such as Bwin, Unibet, Bet-At-Home, Betclick and Expekt are facing a ban on marketing and advertising activities in Poland. 

Donald Tusk, Polish prime minister, revealed he want to regulate gambling industry in the country. If gambling advertising is banned, egaming operators woudl lose £11m’s worth of sponsorship they made to Polish sport. Moreover, any person or business in breach of the law would be fined PLN35,000 (£7,600). 

Current sponsorship deals include Expekt’s sponsorship of the Polish national team; BetAtHome’s shirt sponsorship of Wisla Krakow, champions of last year’s Ekstraklasa top league in Polish football; Betclick’s shirt sponsorship of Ekstraklasa team Lech Poznan and Bwin’s role as a principal sponsor of Ekstraklasa team Legia Warszawa. 

Polish National 2nd League could suffer the €4m a season setback as a result of the loss of Unibet’s title sponsorship.

Betsson country manager for Poland Maciej Poschwald said that new proposals, including raising the tax on offline operators from 10% of stakes to 50% of gross profit, also posed a threat to online bookies. 

Maciej said: “It’s as if the Polish government went through every single campaign undertaken by egaming companies in the last few years and defined these in the new gambling act as forbidden.” 

Owner of affiliate site Bet1×2.pl, Filip Sosnowski, mentioned that the Lech Poznan and Wisla Krakow teams have submitted official statements to the government stating how the proposed advertising ban could be financially damaging. 

However, Sosnowski also argued situation with the ban for online sports wagering companies would only become clear in two weeks’ time when the Polish parliament has debated Tuesday’s proposal and released a second proposal aimed at regulating online gambling markets. 

Sosnowski also mentioned: “While yesterday’s proposed law would impose a ban on advertising for Polish offline bookmakers and could affect online bookies advertising offline, we do not know if the same law would be used for the second project to regulate online markets. This second law will also need to be agreed by the EU.”

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