Georgia Pitches a 5% Tax to Lure Foreign-Facing Gambling Operators

Georgia has submitted draft legislation that would create a dedicated licence for online gambling operators serving customers outside the country, taxed at 5% of gross gaming revenue rather than the 20% rate charged on online casinos serving Georgian players. The bill, an amendment to the law "On the Organisation of Lotteries, Gambling and Profitable Games," was filed to parliament under an accelerated legislative process and would cover online slots and sports betting offered exclusively to foreign citizens and stateless persons. Georgian citizens would be blocked from these platforms automatically.

The move puts Georgia in the same race as Estonia, whose phased GGR tax cut toward 4% has so far drawn only two licence applications, and it follows a regional pattern of governments tightening domestic gambling while courting export-facing operators. Armenia has moved the other way, banning most online casino activity outright. The 5% headline figure matches Tanzania's reformed gambling tax, though the two regimes are built for opposite purposes.

What the bill puts on the table

The proposed framework charges foreign-facing operators 5% on the difference between stakes received and winnings paid out. Each licence runs five years and carries an annual fee of 100,000 GEL (about $37,000, or 28,740 pounds). Operators that miss licence conditions or payment deadlines face fines of 20,000 GEL (about $7,400). The bill also tightens domain rules, limiting each licence to a single website where the current allowance is two.

The explanatory note attached to the bill frames the split as a way to separate gambling as an export industry from gambling as a domestic activity. Lawmakers argue that walling off Georgian residents protects local consumers while the discounted tax pulls in foreign direct investment and creates skilled jobs in software, cybersecurity and digital marketing, plus added budget revenue. That domestic-versus-export framing is the government's own; whether the low rate actually attracts operators is the open question, and the Estonian experience is the nearest live test.

Why Georgia wants the hub label

Georgia has spent four years building one of the strictest domestic gambling regimes in the region. It raised the minimum gambling age to 25, barred public-sector employees and people with relevant criminal records, and added an advertising ban. The Revenue Service reported 1,577,247 individuals on the national exclusion register as of December 2025, close to 40% of the population. On the tax side, the levy on casinos, bingo halls and bookmakers rose from 10% to 15% in July 2024, and the cash-withdrawal tax on online platforms tripled from 2% to 6%.

Those curbs did not kill the sector. Industry turnover grew from roughly 48 billion to 52 billion GEL in a single year, and gambling accounts for about 3.5% of Georgia's GDP, which H2 Gambling Capital has cited as the highest share of any country it tracks. Statista projects the country's gambling-market revenue at about $294.8 million in 2025, with online at roughly $204.3 million. Flutter Entertainment's Adjarabet holds an estimated 40% share by customer deposits, and Betsson Georgia, formerly europebet, remains a major operator. The foreign-facing licence is an attempt to keep that operational base and skills pool busy while shutting domestic demand down.

The comparison Tbilisi is reaching for is Malta. The Malta Gaming Authority reported the gaming industry generated 1.386 billion euros in gross value added in 2024, about 6.7% of the national economy, rising to roughly 10.1% with indirect spillover. Malta counted 315 active licensees holding 323 licences, employed about 14,357 people, and collected 82.4 million euros in fees, levies and consumption tax. Curacao, the other model, replaced its four-master-licence structure with a single state regulator under the LOK ordinance that took force on 24 December 2024, reopening B2C applications in March 2025 and B2B later that year. Both show a small jurisdiction can turn a foreign-facing licence into a meaningful budget line. Neither got there on tax rate alone, which is the caution for Georgia: Estonia cut its rate and still has just two applications in the pipeline, none yet operating, with officials expecting activity no earlier than late 2026.

For affiliates and B2B suppliers, the practical read is narrow. A foreign-facing Georgian licence does not open the domestic market, which stays closed to most residents, so traffic monetization inside the country is not the play. The value, if the bill passes and operators move in, is a new low-tax base of supply alongside an existing technical workforce that already serves Adjarabet and Betsson. The bill is at draft stage under an accelerated process, and the 5% rate, the five-year term and the single-domain rule are the figures to watch as it moves through parliament.