The Georgian authorities have eased regulations for the gambling industry, despite having tightened them just four years ago to combat gambling addiction. The amendments, passed by parliament on October 28 under an expedited procedure, allow casinos to host international tournaments featuring Georgian citizens. The legislation came as a surprise even to the Patriarchate. Opposition to the bill united not only the Church, but also political opposition parties and civil society organizations. Yet Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze stated that a broader debate “was not required,” arguing that nothing of consequence had occurred.
The amendments permit licensed casinos to host international gambling tournaments both on their premises and at external venues. A tournament qualifies as international if at least 80% of participants are foreign nationals, with the remaining 20% open to Georgian citizens. An annual permit for such events costs 100,000 lari (around $38,000). Violations of permit conditions carry a fine of 50,000 lari for organizers, while staging an unauthorized tournament incurs a penalty of 150,000 lari.
The primary concession targets major tournaments. If the prize fund exceeds 3 million lari ($1.15 million) and a gaming table is used exclusively for tournament play, the casino is exempt from paying the standard gambling business fee on that table. Only active casino license holders are eligible to stage such competitions. For them, the law opens a new revenue stream outside their own venues and reduces overhead for high-stakes events.
The bill’s sponsors from the ruling Georgian Dream party justify the legislation by pointing to tourism growth: international poker tournaments, they argue, will attract foreign visitors and stimulate the economy. However, they have released no official estimates regarding expected industry turnover, tax revenues, or the potential costs to public health.
Who Plays and What They Play
The most comprehensive figures on gambling participation among Georgia’s population remain those from a 2022 nationwide survey. Conducted by the research center Alternative Georgia between June and August 2022, the study surveyed 4,076 people aged 18 to 64. A total of 39.4% of respondents had gambled at least once in their lives, 15.3% had played within the past year, and 9.3% within the past month. On average, people first gamble at age 26.
Men gamble twice as often as women: over the past year, 21.5% of men and 9.3% of women participated in gambling activities. The highest concentration of players is among young people. In the 25–29 age demographic, nearly one in two (49.3%) had gambled at least once, and one in four (25.5%) had played in the preceding year.
The most common form of gambling is scratch-off lotteries, tried by 26% of respondents at least once. Standard lotteries followed at 19%, with online slot machines at 12%. Active players over the previous year spent an average of 93 lari (roughly $35 at current exchange rates) per month, with the highest reported expenditure reaching 5,000 lari ($2,100). One in eight reported gambling daily.
The study classified respondents as problem gamblers if they had experienced financial or personal hardship over the past year due to gambling, or had borrowed money or sold property to gamble. Problem gamblers accounted for 2.9% of all respondents. Among men, the rate reached 5.6%, and among individuals aged 25–29, it stood at 6.7%.
No nationwide studies have been carried out since, though indirect indicators point to continued market growth. The gambling sector’s turnover—calculated by the National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat) as the aggregate value of all bets placed—rose from 52.2 billion lari in 2022 to 76.1 billion in 2024 (from $20 billion to $29 billion). Sector-driven budget revenues reached 1.8 billion lari in 2025, according to Deputy Finance Minister Mikheil Dundua, nearly five times the figure from five years earlier. The official registry of “dependent persons,” maintained by the Revenue Service, numbered 41,042 individuals in 2026, with 40,978 having registered voluntarily.
“This is an enormous number for a country as small as Georgia. It’s not just a statistic,” says psychiatrist Irma Kirtadze, an associate professor in the addiction studies program at Ilia State University and lead researcher at Alternative Georgia.
According to Kirtadze, the degree of youth involvement is particularly troubling. She also considers the rate of problem gambling substantial: “Three percent is significant for Georgia.” Behind that figure, she explains, lie unpaid debts, broken families, severe psychological distress, and, in extreme cases, suicidal behavior. The harm caused by gambling, she stresses, ripples far beyond the player to affect everyone around them.
The Faces Behind the Numbers
Giorgi considers himself a poker player and insists he does not suffer from addiction. Yet he admits that when losing streaks dragged on and he continued playing out of sheer emotion, it began to feel as though every deal was rigged against him.
“I couldn’t take it anymore and switched to roulette, to slots,” he recounts. Over time, Giorgi says, he realized that achieving financial stability through gambling alone was practically impossible: a player might place everything on a single number and win, but “one day you have money, and the next day you have nothing.”
At the time, Giorgi defined his goal as covering his living expenses, including university tuition, entirely on his own.
Levan noted that he knows at least a dozen men aged 20 to 30 who live paycheck to paycheck on 800 lari (around $300) and wager their wages online the day they receive them. If a bet wins, he says, a week of celebration follows, after which reality sets in where they cannot even afford cigarettes. If it loses, that deprivation lasts all the way to the next payday. What alarmed him most was seeing teenagers get hooked on sports betting.
Nika was 19 when he attempted to find out whether he could continue entering casinos after the legal age threshold was raised to 25. He placed his first bet on the platform of a major Georgian bookmaker back in the ninth grade. Friends assured him that circumventing the age restriction was simple: one could easily register using someone else’s national ID.
Other accounts have far darker endings. Davit recalls one such story: a former acquaintance, an “upstanding and educated” 28-year-old man, committed suicide. According to Davit, nobody in his circle had suspected he was involved in gambling. Since then, Davit has maintained that the entire industry should be banned in Georgia.
How the Issue Is Studied
The nationwide study underlying the figures cited above was first conducted in Georgia in 2015 and repeated using identical methodology in 2022. The survey measures the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and other psychoactive substances, with gambling incorporated as a standalone module. The research was supported by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction—now the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA). According to Kirtadze, such surveys constitute one of five core epidemiological indicators required to monitor a country’s public health landscape.
Because the 2022 survey was conducted just months after earlier restrictions were enacted, it could not assess their long-term efficacy. No recent nationwide data has been collected since.
“Since then, we haven’t seen a single study of that caliber,” says Kirtadze. The gambling industry, she adds, keeps its internal metrics private as well:
“I have never seen reports from the bookmaking and gambling industry. You will never obtain data on how many people gamble, place bets, or walk into casinos.”
Adolescents have been studied separately. In a 2022 survey conducted by the Center for Gambling Research and Ludomania Prevention with UNICEF support, researchers interviewed 1,000 schoolchildren aged 14 to 17. More than one in ten admitted to gambling, with over a quarter of active players placing cash bets several times a week or more. Some 22% first tried gambling at age 11 or younger. Despite formal bans preventing minors from entering casinos and accessing gaming websites, 24% of adolescent players placed their first bets inside a casino, a slot hall, or on a casino portal.
The Roots of Addiction
In the latest edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), the World Health Organization categorized gambling disorder as an addictive behavior. “This condition requires clinical treatment, which means it also calls for preventive measures,” Kirtadze says.
At the core of any addiction, she explains, is the human pursuit of pleasure—whether derived from food, sensory stimuli, activities, or substances. “Seeking altered states, seeking pleasure is inherent to human nature. Therefore, as long as humans walk this earth, there will be pursuits that draw them into dependency,” the psychiatrist explains.
Whether a recreational habit evolves into an illness depends on a combination of factors known as the biopsychosocial model. There is never a single cause, Kirtadze emphasizes.
Biological factors include genetics and general health: chronic conditions make an individual more vulnerable. Psychological factors center on how one manages stress, resolves problems, and interacts socially. Social factors include cultural norms, legislative frameworks, the physical availability of gambling, and overall societal attitudes.
By way of comparison, Kirtadze points to wine: Georgia is widely seen as the cradle of viticulture, and society looks upon alcohol consumption with greater tolerance than cultures lacking that tradition. Similarly, the prevalence of gambling is directly shaped by how easy it is to enter a casino, walk into a betting shop, or open online slots.
When a behavior turns into an addiction, it does not merely recur; it escalates in frequency. Kirtadze describes the neurological cycle as follows:
“The brain reinforces this behavior with a flood of neurotransmitters—dopamine, serotonin—which helps cement the memory of that pleasure. We retain that memory and strive to replicate it.”
Some individuals, due to underlying vulnerabilities, cannot break the loop, while others stop on their own. The psychiatrist argues that addressing the problem requires acknowledging the gratification gambling offers: “We tend to ignore positive stimuli and focus exclusively on the negative. But the negative cannot exist without the positive.”
Revenue Without a Strategy
Since 2022, Georgian authorities have amended gambling regulations multiple times. In March 2022, television advertising for gambling was outlawed, the minimum legal age was raised from 18 to 25, and civil servants as well as social welfare recipients were barred from gambling altogether. Industry taxes were subsequently raised.
According to Deputy Finance Minister Dundua, rising budget revenues demonstrate that higher taxes delivered positive fiscal results. In June 2026, parliament approved a bill establishing international licenses for online operators catering exclusively to foreigners: Georgian citizens are prohibited from using these platforms, while the tax rate for operators was lowered to 5%, compared to 20% for regular online casinos. The October amendments on tournaments are likewise designed to draw foreign visitors, according to their authors.
The fundamental issue, according to Kirtadze, is not the tax exemptions themselves. “We see economic incentives being prioritized without any comparable, comprehensive public health response,” she says. Georgia, she notes, has never established a national strategy for preventing gambling-related harm.
“A responsible national policy cannot measure the success of the gambling sector solely by tourism, capital investment, and tax revenues.”
The psychiatrist outlines several critical gaps. Spending limits apply only to select demographics, even though the crisis affects society at large. ATMs are routinely placed inside or adjacent to casinos, despite research showing that even a ten-minute delay before accessing cash dampens impulsive play. Gaming venues lack clocks and windows, causing patrons to lose track of time, while electronic gaming machines lack built-in prompts warning players of elapsed time or accumulated losses.
The self-exclusion system, Kirtadze adds, remains cumbersome to use, and some platforms still permit accounts to be registered using arbitrary 11-digit national ID numbers without identity verification. Furthermore, rehabilitation services for individuals struggling with addiction remain fully private and fee-based.
“We have several rehabilitation centers that treat gambling disorder, but they are expensive, and the average Georgian citizen cannot afford a full course of care.”
Screening for gambling disorders is absent from primary healthcare, and gambling harm is omitted from national suicide prevention initiatives. Kirtadze advocates funding prevention, therapy, and research through a dedicated levy on gambling operators, structured to ensure the industry has no say in allocating the funds. She regards industry-financed treatment programs as unethical: “Can you imagine alcohol manufacturers financing the treatment of alcoholism?”
Where Tournaments Fit into the Picture
Kirtadze describes the tournament amendments as a targeted incentive for commercial operators. “Naturally, the industry will respond to this stimulus. But the critical question is how Georgian citizens will respond,” she says. While hotels and restaurants may benefit from such events, she concedes, the net social impact remains unexamined: when weighing public costs against private gains, “it may well prove to be entirely disadvantageous.”
A prize pool of 3 million lari, she notes, functions as a powerful lure on its own. “For citizens of a low-income country, 3 million lari is a massive sum,” Kirtadze says. She adds that operators utilize predictive analytics to target specific demographics, pulling patrons in with free spins and bonuses. Under such conditions, even casual gamblers who stake modest sums can be drawn in by the prospect of such a jackpot.
The Public Defender of Georgia (Ombudsman) had called during parliamentary deliberations for a thorough review of the amendments’ implications for human rights and public health. Bill sponsors never made such an assessment public. When pressed on the initiative, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze remarked that “any law can have lobbyists” and argued that “if substantial capital flows anywhere, it will ultimately end up in the state budget.” That statement stands in contrast to the law itself, which explicitly exempts casinos from paying the gambling business fee on tables hosted at the largest tournaments.
What Other Countries Are Doing
Irma Kirtadze highlights regulatory practices across several European nations. In Belgium, virtually all gambling advertising was banned as of July 1, 2023—spanning television, radio, cinema, and social media—with sports stadium bans taking effect in 2025. Belgium also enforces a strict weekly deposit cap of €200 for online casinos. In Germany, a unified monthly deposit limit of €1,000 has been mandatory across all licensed online operators since 2021: the centralized LUGAS monitoring system tracks cumulative deposits across all websites, allowing higher spending only after verified proof of income.
Sweden, Kirtadze points out, enforces mandatory loss limits alongside a unified national self-exclusion registry, while Norway mandates strict spending caps across multiple gambling products.
On April 6, 2025, the United Kingdom introduced a mandatory levy on gambling operators ranging from 0.1% to 1.1% of their gross gambling yield, replacing the former voluntary contribution model. In its first year, the levy raised nearly £120 million: 50% is directed to clinical treatment within the National Health Service, 30% to prevention initiatives, and 20% to independent research.
Kirtadze cautions that these international examples do not imply every intervention succeeds unconditionally: nations shape policy to fit domestic realities, but their approaches are grounded in empirical research. Rigid restrictions also draw criticism. Intelligence firm H2 Gambling Capital estimates that only about one-third of online bets in Germany pass through licensed operators, with the remainder leaking into unregulated black markets.
In Georgia, industry representatives voice a similar complaint: Giorgi Mamulaishvili, head of the Georgian Gambling Association, claims that up to 2 billion lari drains out of the domestic economy every year through unlicensed offshore platforms.
For now, Irma Kirtadze notes, Georgia lacks the empirical foundation to choose an effective model, if only because it does not know the true scale of the problem: its last nationwide survey was completed four years ago.
If you or your loved ones are struggling with gambling addiction, you can seek a consultation at the Center for Mental Health and Prevention of Addiction in Tbilisi: +995 32 230 10 53. If you or someone near you is experiencing an acute crisis, or if there is an imminent risk of suicide or threat to life, please call 112 — Georgia’s unified emergency number.
