Cyprus does not have an MGA licence. It does not have a single regulatory framework for online casino gambling. Online casinos remain illegal under Cypriot law. And yet, walk through the business districts of Limassol or Nicosia on any given weekday and the logos on office buildings tell a different story.
Soft2Bet, GR8 Tech, Parimatch, SkillOnNet, SoftGamings, 1Win, Gamingtec, TVBET, Uplatform. The island has become one of the most concentrated iGaming technology hubs in Europe, not by licensing operators to serve local players, but by offering the infrastructure, tax efficiency, and lifestyle that make B2B companies want to build there.
This is the story of how Cyprus became the Mediterranean’s quiet iGaming powerhouse.
The Regulatory Split
Cyprus took its first formal step into gambling regulation in 2012, when the Betting Law established the National Betting Authority (NBA) to license and supervise sports betting, both online and retail. The NBA framework was straightforward: operators needed to be registered in Cyprus, hold a minimum authorised capital of €500,000, and submit to ongoing compliance audits covering AML, KYC, and responsible gambling obligations.
Three years later, the Cyprus Casino Control Law of 2015 created a second body, the Cyprus Gaming and Casino Supervision Commission (CGCSC), tasked with regulating land-based casino operations. The CGCSC was designed around a single concession model. One operator would be granted a 30-year licence to develop an integrated casino resort, with 15 years of exclusivity. That licence went to Melco Resorts, the Hong Kong-listed company led by Lawrence Ho.
The critical distinction is what Cyprus did not do. Unlike Malta, which created a comprehensive remote gambling framework covering casino, poker, and slots in the early 2000s, Cyprus left online casino and poker firmly in the prohibited column. The NBA covers sports betting. The CGCSC covers land-based casinos. Everything else, including the online casino products that generate the majority of European iGaming revenue, is not regulated on the island. It is, in fact, explicitly illegal for domestic consumption.
That gap is precisely what shaped Cyprus into the kind of iGaming hub it is today. The companies that set up on the island are not there to serve Cypriot players. They are there to build technology, run operations, and serve regulated markets elsewhere.
Melco and the Casino That Changed the Skyline
Before the B2B wave, Cyprus’s gambling story was a land-based one. Melco Resorts won the integrated casino resort concession and opened a temporary casino in Limassol in June 2018, the first authorised casino in the Republic of Cyprus. The full resort, City of Dreams Mediterranean, followed in July 2023, built at a cost exceeding €600 million.
The property sits in Zakaki, western Limassol, with 500 guest rooms, a 7,500 square-metre casino floor housing approximately 1,000 slot machines and 100 table games, and Cyprus’s largest expo facilities. Melco also operates three satellite casinos in Nicosia, Ayia Napa, and Paphos.
City of Dreams Mediterranean welcomed over three million visitors in 2024. General Manager Grant Johnson has spoken publicly about the resort’s mission to extend Cyprus’s tourism season and attract new audiences from the Gulf and Asia. For the CGCSC, the Melco concession provided a practical framework: a single, closely supervised operator rather than a fragmented market.
But the integrated resort, for all its scale, is only one piece of the Cyprus gambling picture. The bigger story sits in the office towers a few kilometres east.
Limassol: The B2B Capital
If Melco put Cyprus on the casino map, Limassol’s technology district put it on the iGaming B2B map. The city’s combination of EU membership, a 12.5% corporate tax rate, English as a widely spoken business language, a Mediterranean climate, and proximity to Eastern European talent markets created conditions that attracted a particular kind of company: platform providers, game studios, and operational technology businesses that serve operators in regulated markets across Europe, Latin America, and beyond.
GR8 Tech is the most prominent example. The company was formerly known as Parimatch Tech, the technology arm of the Parimatch betting brand that was founded in Kyiv in 1994 before relocating its headquarters to Limassol. In early 2023, the B2B division rebranded as GR8 Tech and began operating independently, offering sportsbook, casino, and turnkey platform solutions to third-party operators. The scale is significant. GR8 Tech processed over 12.4 billion bets in 2024, a 125% increase year-on-year, and reported a 25% increase in turnover. The company handles peak loads of tens of thousands of bets per second during major sporting events, running its infrastructure on AWS from its Limassol base.
Parimatch itself remains headquartered in Limassol, managing consumer-facing operations across more than 15 countries with a workforce exceeding 4,000 people. The dual structure, Parimatch for B2C and GR8 Tech for B2B, represents the kind of vertically integrated operation that Cyprus has become known for. What started as a Ukrainian bookmaker three decades ago is now a Cypriot-headquartered technology group.
Soft2Bet, which reported 85% revenue growth in 2025, is another anchor. Founded in 2016 under the legal entity Estata Limited, the company established its corporate headquarters in Nicosia and built a B2B casino and sportsbook platform that now holds licences in Malta, Sweden, Denmark, Romania, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Ontario. Its proprietary MEGA gamification engine, which introduces characters, quests, and personalised rewards into the casino experience, earned the company 12 nominations at the EGR Marketing and Innovation Awards in 2025. Soft2Bet’s brands Betinia and Campobet recorded GGR growth of 148% and 54% respectively in 2024.
SkillOnNet, established in 2005, chose Limassol as its operational base and has grown into a full-suite casino software provider with over 3,000 games on its platform. The company supplies customisable white-label and turnkey casino solutions to operators across multiple jurisdictions, hiring developers, product managers, and customer service teams locally.
The Cyprus iGaming Jobs Market
The concentration of B2B providers and operators across Limassol and Nicosia has turned Cyprus into one of Europe’s most active iGaming hiring markets. Specialist recruitment agencies like Emerald Zebra, GRS Recruitment, and StaffMatters now operate dedicated iGaming desks on the island, while job boards consistently list over 100 open iGaming positions in Limassol alone. The demand spans the full range of industry functions: compliance, product management, software engineering, VIP management, affiliate marketing, and AML. Companies like BrainRocket, SoftGamings, SkillOnNet, and GR8 Tech are actively scaling their Cyprus teams, competing for a talent pool that draws heavily from Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and increasingly from Western European professionals drawn by the island’s 12.5% corporate tax rate and the favourable personal income tax treatment available to new Cyprus tax residents.
The types of roles reflect the B2B-heavy composition of the market. Compliance and regulatory positions are in particularly high demand, driven by the number of companies holding multiple European licences from their Cypriot operational base. VIP management, sportsbook operations, and customer-facing roles also feature prominently, particularly among operator groups running brands across regulated jurisdictions. A snapshot of current openings illustrates the breadth: RubyPlay is hiring a Compliance Officer, SkillOnNet is recruiting a Regulatory Compliance Manager at its Limassol office, WeDoSupport needs a VIP Sportsbook Manager (Romanian-speaking) in Limassol, and further roles are live across affiliate management and operations.
For professionals considering the move, Cyprus offers a combination that few European iGaming hubs can match: lower cost of living than Malta or London, over 300 days of sunshine per year, an established expat community, and a growing number of employers offering relocation packages. The annual Cyprus Gaming Show, now entering its seventh edition, has become a fixture for local networking. As more companies set up development campuses and expand their Cyprus headcount, the gap between the island’s job market and those of Malta and Gibraltar continues to narrow.
The Eastern European Pipeline
Cyprus’s emergence as an iGaming hub cannot be understood without its geographic and cultural proximity to the CIS and Eastern European talent markets. The island has long been a destination for Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian entrepreneurs and technology professionals. When the iGaming industry began its rapid expansion in the 2010s, Cyprus offered these communities a familiar environment with EU-level legal protections.
That pipeline brought companies like 1Win, which according to industry data sources ranks as the largest Cyprus-based gambling company by revenue, reporting $475.3 million. 1xBet and MelBet, both major international betting brands, established operational presences on the island. BrainRocket, a technology and digital marketing group, set up in Limassol and expanded into iGaming-adjacent services. Hititbet and Boomerang built operator brands with Cypriot corporate structures.
The pattern extends to B2B suppliers. SoftGamings, which maintains offices in both Limassol and Riga, operates as an aggregation and white-label platform provider, connecting game studios with operators through a unified API. TVBET, a live casino games provider with over 200 employees, distributes its 15 live dealer titles to operators worldwide. Uplatform provides sportsbook and casino solutions from the island. Gamingtec offers a turnkey iGaming platform targeting operators entering new regulated markets.
Game studios followed. ELA Games and RubyPlay develop slot content from Cyprus, while Fugaso produces casino games with a focus on visual design and HTML5 technology. Aviatrix, a crash-game provider, operates from the island, tapping into a genre that has seen explosive growth across emerging markets. Relum runs its Casino Engine platform from Cyprus, providing a game aggregation layer for operators seeking rapid content integration.
Even crypto-native operators found a home. Roobet and GetMinted (Mint.io) established corporate or operational presences in Cyprus, drawn by the same combination of EU jurisdiction and business-friendly infrastructure that attracted the B2B providers.
OPAP and the Allwyn Connection
The other pillar of Cyprus’s gambling ecosystem is OPAP Cyprus, the subsidiary of the Greek lottery giant that administers lottery products on the island. Following Allwyn’s completion of its business combination with OPAP in March 2026, creating the second-largest listed lottery and gaming operator globally at a €16 billion valuation, OPAP Cyprus now sits within one of the largest gambling groups in Europe.
The Allwyn-OPAP merger has implications for Cyprus beyond the lottery vertical. With Allwyn’s portfolio spanning national lotteries in the Czech Republic, Greece, Austria, Italy, and the UK, plus its majority stake in US daily fantasy leader PrizePicks, the OPAP Cyprus operation is now part of a group with the capital and strategic ambition to expand across product categories. Whether that eventually extends to a push for online casino regulation in Cyprus remains an open question.
The Paradox at the Centre
Cyprus’s iGaming story contains a fundamental paradox. The island hosts dozens of companies that build, operate, and maintain online casino platforms, yet online casino gambling is explicitly illegal under Cypriot law. The CGCSC’s own website states plainly that it has no jurisdiction over online casinos or betting companies, and that online casinos are prohibited, not regulated or licensed by any authority in Cyprus.
This creates a unique dynamic. The companies based in Cyprus do not serve the Cypriot market. They hold licences from Malta’s MGA, the UK Gambling Commission, Sweden’s Spelinspektionen, Romania’s ONJN, and a growing list of other jurisdictions. Cyprus provides the corporate structure, the talent base, and the operational environment. Other regulators provide the consumer-facing licences.
It is a model that mirrors what has happened in Armenia, where Yerevan has become a B2B development hub for companies like BetConstruct, EveryMatrix, and Digitain without Armenia itself being a major regulated consumer market. Cyprus does it at a larger scale and with the structural advantage of EU membership.
The question is whether this model is sustainable in the long term. Industry observers have speculated for years about Cyprus eventually introducing online casino licensing. The gambling sector recorded €1.1 billion in revenue in 2023, a 79% increase over three years, and the Gambling Activities market is projected to continue growing. A regulated online casino framework would give Cyprus-based operators the option to serve the domestic market, but it would also bring the compliance overhead and regulatory scrutiny that some companies have specifically avoided by staying on the B2B side.
What Cyprus Built
The island did not set out to become an iGaming hub in the way Malta did. There was no equivalent of the MGA’s 2004 moment, no deliberate policy of courting remote gambling operators with a bespoke licensing framework. What Cyprus offered instead was a package of structural advantages, EU membership, favourable taxation, geographic position, lifestyle, talent availability, that happened to align precisely with what a rapidly growing industry needed.
The result is an ecosystem that looks nothing like Malta’s and yet competes with it for the same talent and, increasingly, the same companies. Medier, the iGaming services group, operates from the island. The annual Cyprus Gaming Show, now in its seventh year, draws operators, regulators, and suppliers from across the region. Limassol’s seafront offices house teams from companies that process billions in annual betting volume.
Cyprus did not build its iGaming industry on regulation. It built it on geography, tax policy, and the willingness of thousands of technology professionals from across Eastern Europe and the CIS to relocate to a Mediterranean island with good internet, EU protections, and year-round sunshine. Whether the regulatory framework eventually catches up with the industry it hosts is the question that will define the island’s next chapter.
The iGaming Europe Editorial
