Romania’s National Gambling Office (ONJN) has blacklisted approximately 800 illegal gambling websites, marking one of its largest enforcement actions to date as it intensifies efforts against the online black market.
The latest crackdown follows the addition of around 370 websites earlier in the current administration’s mandate, bringing the total number of blacklisted sites under the current leadership to approximately 1,180, including Polymarket. Since ONJN was established in 2013, around 1,500 illegal gambling websites have been blocked.
The increase in enforcement was enabled by a new detection tool designed to identify clone websites—platforms that operate under multiple domains while using the same underlying infrastructure—allowing the regulator to target illegal networks more efficiently.
ONJN President Vlad-Cristian Soare described the black market as a Europe-wide challenge, claiming that more than 70% of the continent’s online gambling activity takes place through unlicensed operators. He said Romania is responding by strengthening legislation, expanding digital oversight, and investing in new monitoring technologies.
According to Soare, recent legal reforms have granted ONJN the authority to order the removal of illegal online content, while the regulator is also developing advanced monitoring tools with support from the Romanian Digitalization Authority.
The regulator added that, despite not yet completing its digital transformation, it has already identified suspicious transactions and potential manipulation of gross gaming revenue (GGR), with the findings referred to the relevant authorities earlier this year.