Happy Monday! While you were looking for the strength to get out of bed, the EU's illegal gambling market found €13B. Let's see how everyone's week is going 👇

⚡️ $36B in losses, €13B in illegal market profits, and record taxes: how much iGaming earns — and loses

Fresh numbers on gambling money, regulatory shifts, and figures that show the true scale of both legal and illegal markets.

📌 Follow the money

— Singapore's gambling tax revenue reached $2.84B for the fiscal year — up 11.9% year-on-year

— Australian players spent a record $36B on gambling in the 2025–2026 fiscal year — $1.2B more than the year before

— In France, the total tax burden on online betting reaches 59.3% of GGR: 33.7% fiscal levy, 15% social, 10.6% sports. The highest rate in Europe

— In Brazil, operators have received $3.5M in fines since 2025, with 66,000+ domains blocked

— Also in Brazil: 14 licensed betting sites suspended over SPA compliance violations

— Gen Z and millennials made up 88% of all online bettors in the US in July 2026. On average, players lose 25 cents of every dollar sent to a bookmaker

— The EU's illegal gambling sector may hit €13B in net profit in 2026. Already 35% of payments on illegal sites are made in crypto — the share could reach 70% by 2030

— Crypto payment risks for iGaming operators in 2026 — full breakdown on 3S.INFO

📌 GEO news

— Armenia will start blocking illegal gambling sites via internet providers from February 2027

— In Russia, 717 self-exclusion applications were filed via MFC service centers in the first week of September alone — not counting those filed through Gosuslugi

— From October 2026, Cambodia will temporarily suspend live games across all its venues

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👉 Which story surprised you most this week? Drop it in the comments.

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🔥 Betting Disguised as Trading? The Main Debate Around Prediction Markets

A bookmaker and a prediction market can offer the same prediction — for example, which team will win. But from a regulatory perspective, they are two different products.

📌A bookmaker operates under the rules of a specific state. Entering a new market may require a separate license, a local partnership, product certification, as well as compliance with advertising, geolocation, KYC, and responsible gambling requirements. The operator also pays the state-mandated tax on gambling revenue.

📌Prediction markets use a different structure: a user purchases a financial contract on the outcome of an event. If the contract is traded on a registered exchange, its regulation falls under the CFTC. Instead of separate gambling licenses, a federal regulatory framework applies.

This is where the main legal dispute arises: if a user predicts the winner of a match, is it a sports bet or a financial derivative?

One of the main participants in the dispute is Kalshi, a CFTC-registered exchange for event contracts. The company considers sports contracts to be financial derivatives, while state gaming regulators view them as unlicensed sports betting.

✔️ In March 2025, New Jersey authorities ordered Kalshi to stop offering sports contracts to state residents. Kalshi went to federal court and obtained an injunction blocking enforcement of the order. In September 2026, New Jersey appealed to the US Supreme Court over the division of regulatory authority.

This also matters for traffic operations: a change in the legal status of prediction markets could affect advertising, registration, and affiliate program terms.

👉 Why has the dispute between federal and state regulators emerged around prediction markets? Read the full analysis here.

Can prediction markets compete with bookmakers on equal terms? 👇

🔥 Swipe instead of spin: casinos are copying TikTok — and it's working

A player watches a short penalty-kick video and picks an outcome in seconds: goal, save, or miss. The clip plays out — result revealed. Don't like the scene? Swipe — next one. A round takes 8–10 seconds.
It's not a slot and not a sports bet. It's a new hybrid: short video + instant game + simplified betting.

📌 The average bet in swipe games on one market turned out to be 20x higher than in crash games at the same operator. Player behavior looks closer to sports betting — with round lengths matching crash. Provider's own data.
📌 Swipe Games has built a library of 20,000+ videos and generates content with AI — because a repeated clip kills the sense of a fresh event. The content factory becomes part of the game product.
📌 The lobby turns into a recommendation feed: even a swipe without a bet is data. The operator learns football doesn't hook you but cars do — and the feed adapts.

Key nuance: outcomes are determined by certified RNG, not the video's "real" logic. The penalty kick is the context for a decision, not a sporting event.
And the format's big question: an endless feed with no natural stopping point + a bet on every clip. Monetization loves it. Regulators — not so much.

👉 How swipe changes monetization, CRM, the fate of game studio brands, and what operators should measure — full breakdown here
Swipe casinos — a new genre on the level of crash games, or a pretty shell for one season? 👇