Ukraine is pushing forward with a data-driven approach to gambling oversight, anchored by the launch of the State Online Monitoring System, known as SOMS.
The system was developed under the leadership of Hennadii Novikov, who was appointed Head of PlayCity in April 2025 to lead a major overhaul of Ukraine’s gambling governance.
PlayCity serves as Ukraine’s state agency for gambling and lottery oversight, established to address what the Council of Ministers viewed as an economic and security threat.
Novikov’s appointment came with a clear mandate to modernise a stalled sector and bring greater transparency to a market operating under significant pressure.
SOMS is designed to give authorities continuous, real-time visibility of activity across Ukraine’s licensed gambling market, moving well beyond traditional licensing frameworks.
The system records bets, returns, winnings, and other transactional data from licensed operators in a timeframe close to real time, enabling far more responsive oversight.
Novikov has been direct about the philosophy underpinning the reform, stating that “digitalisation is not an additional component of the reform. It is its foundation.”
He has also explained the core limitation of older regulatory models, noting that “thousands of gambling operations can take place within seconds, which means periodic reporting alone cannot provide regulators with a complete and timely picture.”
SOMS allows the regulator to cross-reference actual market activity against operator reporting, giving tax authorities direct access to primary transactional data needed to verify gross gaming revenue and player-related taxes.
Critically, if information cannot be transmitted to SOMS for any reason, transaction data continues to be recorded and stored automatically, ensuring no gaps in oversight.
The approach positions Ukraine as a notable example of regulatory modernisation, with Novikov suggesting the country’s pace of digital reform is outpacing many of its European counterparts.
For a nation operating under active conflict, implementing such infrastructure represents a considerable logistical and administrative undertaking that few regulators have attempted under comparable circumstances.
The broader ambition, as Novikov has described it, is to build “a transparent and lawful market in which regulatory decisions are based on verified data.”
Ukraine’s experience with SOMS may offer valuable lessons for other jurisdictions still relying heavily on periodic reporting and retrospective inspections to monitor their gambling markets.
