Poland's blocked gambling domains: how the register works

The legal basis: art. 15f and who keeps the list

The register was written into the Gambling Act as art. 15f, and its formal name is the Rejestr domen służących do oferowania gier hazardowych niezgodnie z ustawą, the register of domains used to offer gambling contrary to the act. It is kept by the minister responsible for public finances, published at hazard.mf.gov.pl, and public in the plain sense: anyone may access the data, and the Ministry also exposes it as a machine-readable feed. An entry names a domain and the date it was added, nothing more; when a domain is delisted it drops out, which is why the sequence numbers run slightly ahead of the live count.

The criteria for an entry are in ust. 4: a domain used to run gambling, or to advertise or promote it, contrary to the law and accessible to internet users on Polish territory. A Polish-language site or one advertised in Poland is the obvious case, and the Ministry restates the test on its own overview page; the trigger is accessibility to users in Poland, so a site in English is not outside the criteria by virtue of its language. The result is a list dominated by mirror variants of a few hundred brands, both the bare and the www form listed separately, plus hijacked innocuous Polish sites that redirect to casinos.

What an entry triggers: 48 hours, 30 days, 250,000 PLN

Two kinds of company have duties once a domain is listed, and the player feels both. Under art. 15f ust. 5 an internet provider must, free of charge, remove the listed domain from its DNS within 48 hours of the entry and redirect the connection to a Ministry page; it must also restore access within 48 hours of a delisting. Under art. 15g a payment service provider may not provide services on a listed domain, and one already serving it must stop within 30 days of the entry. Each faces an administrative fine of up to 250,000 PLN under art. 89 for failing. The site, the domain holder or the payment provider may object within 2 months of the entry.

The last row is the change that reached players. Polski Standard Płatności, BLIK's operator, connected the scheme to the register through an API with the approval of the President of the National Bank of Poland: the system reads the domain tied to each transaction, and a listed domain means the payment is not sent to authorisation at all, for domestic and foreign transactions alike. It is a block by domain, not by category, so an unlisted mirror of the same brand still takes BLIK. The BLIK casinos page shows what the cashier does in each case.

The redirect page and what it tells you

Open a listed domain from a Polish connection and the provider sends you to a Ministry page on a fixed address instead of the casino. The statute prescribes its contents: information about the register, the list of licensed sites, and a warning about the fiscal-criminal liability of participants in illegal gambling. It is the plainest statement of the legal position a player will see, and it is worth reading once: the Ministry's own list of licensed sites is the state casino under the monopoly and the bookmakers with a permit, and nothing else.

The brand's reaction is almost always a new domain, which is what the monthly count measures. Our audits found 65 Spinbetter domains in one export of the register, a numbered series and a lettered series among them; 1Go's main domain and 71 sibling mirrors entered together in a single block of positions; and 27 more 1Win domains added on one day on top of the two listed earlier. A mirror is a domain, not a licence, and the mirrors guide explains what changes when a brand moves and what does not.

What an entry means for a player, and what it does not

What it means in practice: the domain will not resolve at your provider within two days, a BLIK deposit to it fails before your bank app is asked, and any Polish payment provider serving it has a month to stop. What it means in law is nothing new, because the entry is about the domain: the player's position is written elsewhere, in art. 29a of the Gambling Act, which prohibits taking part in online gambling run outside the monopoly and without a permit, in art. 89 ust. 1 pkt 6, which sets an administrative penalty of 100% of the winnings not reduced by the stakes, and in art. 107 § 2 of the Fiscal Penal Code, a fine of up to 120 daily rates. Those apply whether or not the particular domain has been listed yet; the legality guide quotes them.

How to search a domain before you deposit

1. Copy the exact domain from the address bar

   Brands run mirrors that differ by a digit or a letter, and the register lists the bare and the www form separately. Search the string you are on, not the brand name.

2. Open the register on the Ministry site

   Use the search box or the feed; the entry shows the domain and the date it was added. An entry with an old date on a domain that still resolves means your provider has not blocked it or you are not on a Polish connection.

3. Read the result against the rail you plan to use

   Listed: BLIK will fail before authorisation and Polish payment providers are on a 30-day clock. Unlisted today: BLIK works, and the domain can be added at any time, so check again before the next deposit.

4. Do not confuse the list with trust

   Run the five checks on the brand itself: licence on the regulator register, withdrawal clause, verification order, Polish chat, complaint route.

The scale behind the advice: the Ministry counts over 55,000 entries and about 700 new domains a month, and a direct count of the public feed gave 57,539 live entries with the highest sequence number a few positions higher, the gap being delisted domains. A brand that serves Poland is on the list somewhere; the only question a search answers is whether the mirror in front of you is.