Romania, once regarded as one of Eastern Europe’s most attractive regulated gambling markets, is witnessing a rapid exodus of affiliate networks that have traditionally connected players with online casinos and sportsbooks, and the reason lies in a fundamental regulatory shift that has turned what was once an open marketing ecosystem into one of the most heavily licensed and policed environments in Europe. The National Office for Gambling, known as ONJN, introduced the Class II license category which mandates that any platform publishing content about licensed casinos or sportsbooks for a Romanian audience must itself hold a state license, meaning that a publisher can no longer buy a domain, write reviews and collect revenue share anonymously without formal authorization, as publishing online casino or sports betting content without that authorization is now a direct violation of state law.
The financial and administrative barriers that accompany this change have triggered a rapid consolidation phase, with affiliates operating without a Class II license being pushed out either through direct ISP domain blocking, as the ONJN blacklist reached 2,881 domains by September 2026, or because licensed operators face severe regulatory penalties for accepting traffic from unregulated sources. Under Emergency Ordinance 82/2023 approved by Law 107/2024 and strengthened by Law 141/2025 which made breaches a criminal offence punishable by six months to two years imprisonment plus revocation of license and fines of 150,000 to 200,000 lei, Class II suppliers including game studios, platform providers, hosting firms, payment processors and affiliates are prohibited from providing any service directly or indirectly to operators that accept Romanian players without a Class I license, and must geolocate players independently and file monthly reports to ONJN by the 10th of each month. At the same time operating costs have surged, with a Class II annual fee of 20,000 euros plus a 15,000 euros responsible gambling contribution, while operators themselves face a 30 percent income tax on revenue, a 2 percent fee on player deposits for addiction prevention, and a 300,000 euros minimum annual operator license fee, with state revenues climbing from 3.3 billion lei in 2022 to 4.3 billion lei in 2024.
The crackdown intensified in March 2026 when ONJN filed a criminal complaint with DIICOT, the Directorate for Investigation of Organised Crime and Terrorism, against a licensed Class II affiliate that used covert geo-targeting technology to identify Romanian IPs and redirect them through a chain of landing page to affiliate tracker to bridge domain to mirror casino offshore, promoting unlicensed platforms such as Verde Casino and NV Casino in Romanian language, an operation ONJN described as intentional, automated and repeatable. Faced with such enforcement, requirements for automated geo-blocking, jurisdiction-level reporting and exposure to criminal liability, many smaller affiliates and content sites have chosen to exit Romania altogether and relocate their traffic to more permissive markets, while licensed affiliates that remain now restrict their operator lists strictly to ONJN license holders, narrowing the commercial field on both sides and accelerating the shift toward a model where digital scale matters more than broad affiliate reach.
