Estonia has positioned itself as Europe’s next major iGaming hub, drawing comparisons to established jurisdictions like Malta and Gibraltar with an ambitious tax reform plan.
The country plans to reduce gambling taxes to 4% of gross gaming revenue by January 2029, a move designed to attract international operators not yet considering Estonia as a viable market.
However, the attractiveness of those tax cuts could be undermined if the government moves forward with tighter restrictions on gambling advertising.
Diana Lints, Head of Services Supervision Office at the Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority (TTJA), shed light on a supervisory project that revealed serious compliance failures among licensed operators.
Speaking to national public broadcaster ERR, Lints highlighted findings from a 2025 inspection project that examined 230 gambling advertisements from regulated operators across the Estonian market.
Of those 230 advertisements, 104 were found to be in breach of existing marketing regulations, meaning 45% of inspected ads were directly violating Estonia’s Advertising Act.
The breaches varied considerably, spanning misleading adverts, warning texts that fell short of legal requirements, and use of marketing that is outright prohibited under Estonian law.
Mari-Liis Aas, Consumer Protection Adviser at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, confirmed that Estonia is now considering an update to its Advertising Act to drive better compliance among gambling firms.
Aas noted that under the existing framework, advertising of games of chance, which include poker, roulette and slot machines, is generally prohibited except in places specified by law, such as gambling venues.
Advertising certain types of gambling, such as lotteries and sports betting, is more broadly permitted under current rules, although specific restrictions also apply in those categories.
On the prospect of regulatory reform, Aas stated: “Since the entire process is still at a very early stage, it is unfortunately not yet possible to say whether or to what extent gambling advertising regulation will be changed in the future.”
The government is expected to monitor compliance standards within the licensed gambling market very closely as the broader tax reform rollout continues through the remainder of the decade.
Should stricter advertising rules eventually be introduced, it would be the licensed operators currently failing compliance standards that the wider industry would have to thank for that outcome.
