Totalizator Sportowy has registered Spinky.pl with Poland’s Ministry of Finance, giving the state gambling monopoly a second legal online casino brand for the first time since it entered the market in 2018.
The domain has been added to the ministry’s register of authorised gambling websites, the list that determines which sites Polish internet service providers are required to leave accessible. Everything not on it is blocked. Spinky is currently in a restricted testing phase, with access widened gradually rather than opened to the public at once.
Until now, Total Casino was the only legal online casino in Poland. It launched in December 2018 on a Playtech platform and has held that position alone for close to eight years.
A second brand built in-house
The technical difference between the two brands is the more significant part of the announcement. Total Casino runs on Playtech technology. Spinky runs on a platform Totalizator Sportowy developed itself, after more than a year of work.
That build is also why the brand is late. Totalizator Sportowy had targeted a December 2025 launch and postponed it when the platform was not ready. The staged rollout now under way suggests the operator is testing capacity and payment flows before opening registration more widely.
Owning the platform changes the operator’s cost base. Licence fees and revenue share paid to a third-party supplier become internal development and maintenance costs, and product decisions no longer depend on a vendor roadmap. It also concentrates risk: any outage, certification issue or compliance gap now sits with Totalizator Sportowy rather than with a supplier.
What the monopoly covers
Poland’s structure has been in place since amendments to the 2009 Gambling Act took effect on 1 April 2017. Online casino games are reserved exclusively for Totalizator Sportowy, which is owned by the State Treasury. Private operators can apply for licences to offer online sports betting, but they are barred from slots, live dealer and table games.
Enforcement runs through the National Revenue Administration (KAS), which maintains the domain register and coordinates payment blocking against sites that are not on it. The same split exists in a shrinking number of European markets. Hungary’s government is reviewing the Szerencsejáték Zrt monopoly, and Austria’s is preparing to end its own under a draft law leaked earlier this year.
Channelisation is improving slowly
Polish gambling tax receipts reached PLN 6.24 billion (€1.46 billion) in 2025, up 16.8% on 2024. The unlicensed share of the total market was 27.5% last year, down from 28.9% in 2024.
The casino vertical is where the gap is widest. Unlicensed sites accounted for 37.6% of casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) in 2025, a figure that reflects the basic asymmetry of a single-brand monopoly competing against an offshore market with no product restrictions and no Polish tax to pay. Globally, the unregulated sector handled an estimated $5.9 trillion in wagers in 2025, according to GCI.
A second brand gives Totalizator Sportowy a way to reach players Total Casino does not, with a different product mix and a different marketing position, without Poland changing its licensing law. Whether that recovers meaningful share from offshore operators is a harder question. The players using unlicensed casinos are largely there for games, bonuses and payment options that Polish law does not permit either brand to offer.
Tax policy remains unsettled
The launch lands while Poland’s gambling tax settings are still in dispute. In December 2025, President Karol Nawrocki vetoed amendments to the Public Health Act and the Personal Income Tax Act that would have raised the levy on player winnings from 10% to 15%. Nawrocki said the measures were fiscal rather than public health policy, and pointed to a budget deficit above PLN 240 billion after eleven months of the year.
The veto is not final. The Sejm can override it with a three-fifths majority and at least half of members present, which keeps the increase available to the government if it returns to the issue.
Industry bodies have spent the past two years pressing for the monopoly on online casino to be opened to licensed private operators, on the argument that a competitive licensed market would channel more play onshore than one state brand can. The government has not moved on it.
What to watch
The immediate test for Spinky is how quickly it comes out of restricted testing and what the platform can carry once it does. If the in-house build performs, it gives Totalizator Sportowy a base it can launch further brands or verticals on without a supplier negotiation. If it does not, the operator has taken on a technology problem that Playtech previously handled for it.
The larger question is whether two state brands move the 37.6% black-market casino figure at all by the end of 2026. That number, more than the launch itself, is what any argument for or against opening Poland’s online casino market will be built on.
Source: Totalizator Sportowy
