ONJN Blacklists Around 800 Illegal Gambling Sites in Romania as New Technology Targets Clone Domains

Romania’s National Office for Gambling (ONJN) has added approximately 800 illegal gambling websites to the country’s national blacklist, marking the largest single blacklist expansion under the regulator’s current leadership.

The decision was announced on 31 July 2026 by ONJN, whose Supervisory Committee approved the addition of the new domains. The latest action more than doubles the previous record established during the same mandate, when approximately 370 illegal gambling sites were blacklisted.

The regulator has faced a persistent challenge in tackling unlicensed online gambling operators. Under the previous approach, websites were generally identified and blocked individually, but operators could quickly return by launching new domains that closely resembled those that had already been blocked. This practice has made traditional domain-by-domain enforcement difficult to maintain.

According to ONJN, approximately 1,500 illegal gambling websites were blacklisted between the institution’s establishment in 2013 and April 2025. Since the beginning of the current leadership’s mandate, approximately 1,180 sites have been added to the blacklist, including platforms such as Polymarket.

The ONJN blacklist serves as the regulator’s official register of domains that are not authorised to provide gambling services to Romanian players. Websites are added following decisions by the Supervisory Committee, with the relevant domains published by the Office together with annexes detailing the affected addresses.

New clone-site detection technology drives blacklist expansion

ONJN attributed the unusually large number of new entries to a newly developed tool designed to identify clone gambling websites.

The technology is intended to detect platforms that share the same underlying root while operating through multiple domains. According to the regulator, this approach addresses one of the main weaknesses of traditional enforcement: once an illegal gambling brand is blocked at one address, it can reappear almost immediately through another domain.

By identifying related domains at scale, ONJN says the new system can support a shift away from manually handling illegal websites one by one and towards a more automated method of identifying and restricting networks of clone sites.

Staffing and budget constraints push ONJN towards automation

ONJN president Vlad-Cristian Soare described the illegal gambling market as a broader European problem and argued that the institution’s limited resources make greater use of technology necessary.

Soare said:

“The black market is a systemic problem at European level. Over 70% of the European online gambling market consists of operators active on the black market.”

The ONJN president pointed to budgetary restrictions, the lack of room to increase the institution’s staffing structure and difficulties in recruiting IT specialists as factors limiting the regulator’s ability to rely on additional personnel.

According to Soare, IT recruitment is particularly difficult because specialists can be offered a net salary of approximately 6,000 lei per month. Against this background, he said automation and digitalisation represent the most practical way for the institution to increase its enforcement capacity.

Legislative amendments expand ONJN’s enforcement powers

Soare also highlighted recent changes to Romania’s gambling legislation. He said the law has already been amended to give ONJN the authority to issue orders requiring the removal of illegal content.

The regulator has also introduced several technology-based monitoring mechanisms. Soare said Romania has become the only country to have a public registry of gaming devices, while gambling machines are equipped with QR codes that provide access to registry information when scanned. He also pointed to the use of geolocation systems for gaming devices.

ONJN says it has secured the necessary budget and, with assistance from the Romanian Digitalisation Authority, is beginning a procedure to develop additional monitoring tools. The systems are intended to rely as much as possible on the government’s private cloud infrastructure.

The need for more sophisticated monitoring has increased as ONJN gains access to the servers of online operators. Soare said the amount of metadata now available to the regulator is substantial and requires advanced digital tools capable of analysing the information and turning it into effective enforcement results.

The latest blacklist expansion is therefore being presented by ONJN not simply as a larger blocking operation, but as evidence of a broader change in how the institution approaches illegal gambling. Rather than relying predominantly on reactive, domain-by-domain interventions, the regulator is seeking to use automated detection, data analysis and digital monitoring to identify illegal operators and their associated domains more rapidly.

Soare concluded:

“Today’s results show that the institution is exercising its authority, strengthening its control capacity, and taking important steps in the transition from a reactive approach to one based on technology, data, and rapid intervention.”

By fLEXI tEAM