RedCore CEO and founder Marina Ilina is making the case that regulatory technology is not a burden on the iGaming industry but rather a shared opportunity for all parties involved.
Ilina argues that the iGaming sector has always presented operators with two distinct paths: a transparent licensed model or an unregulated grey market with no legal protections.
She contends that the sheer scale of grey markets globally is largely a consequence of governments not knowing how to build functioning regulatory systems in their own jurisdictions.
RedCore grew out of an iGaming holding company, giving the business a rare dual perspective on the challenges faced by both operators and the regulators tasked with overseeing them.
Ilina explains that this background helps RedCore identify which tools genuinely regulate a market and which simply create compliance burdens for operators without delivering real value to governments.
The financial cost of under-regulation is striking, with data from the European Casino Association showing EU governments missed out on €20bn in tax revenue in 2024, while the entire regulated market generated just €8.4bn.
According to that same data, 71% of the EU’s online gambling market is controlled by unlicensed operators, a figure that rises to 82% in Eastern Europe alone.
Ilina is direct about what this means in practice: “For every €1 earned by a licensed operator, an unlicensed operator generates €2.40.”
She warns that governments risk damaging their own reputations among operators when they treat the iGaming industry as a political scapegoat rather than a legitimate economic sector worth regulating properly.
“It is very easy to blame a gambling operator, especially one that is public and fully licensed, for almost any social problem,” Ilina said, adding that such approaches ultimately push operators away and drive capital out of a country.
On the question of bureaucratic resistance, Ilina notes that the hardest challenge when approaching regulators is simply knowing where to start, since software alone cannot launch a regulated market without a proper legislative foundation.
She also highlights lobbying from existing market participants as a significant obstacle, since established operators have little incentive to welcome increased competition through better-regulated markets.
Looking ahead, Ilina is clear that banning gambling outright is not a viable solution, stating: “It will simply become underground, it will be invisible, but it will continue to grow.”
Her long-term ambition for RedCore is to build a three-way system where governments understand the industry, operators have clear rules to operate within, and users have guaranteed protections and responsible gaming enforcement.
“If we, as a technology-driven intermediary, can create a system that enables this kind of cooperation between all three parties, then we will have achieved our goal,” Ilina concluded.
