The 2024 amendment to the Law on Games of Chance equips the Games of Chance Administration with an expedited licence-revocation power, triggered where organised-crime involvement or unauthorised online-gambling activity is found. This power rests on DURABLE primary-legislation footing, but its practical contours are described only by Legal 500's Probable-confidence, T3-sourced commentary; no primary-source confirmation of a specific enforcement action or licence revocation exercised under this new power was located this cycle. That absence is logged as a genuine evidence gap rather than treated as evidence of inaction. The architectural significance of the power should not be understated: it represents a material tightening of the enforcement toolkit available to the regulator, independent of whether or when a first case materialises, and prospective operators should weight this uncertainty into their risk assessment precisely because no track record yet exists to calibrate against.
Serbia · Question 10 of 11
Enforcement: How hard does the regulator enforce?
Mixed · Confirmed · Not reviewed · 3 post-review updates · Not reviewed · Back to full Serbia report →
Key section parameters
| Jurisdiction | Serbia (RS) |
|---|---|
| Regulator | Recorded in register |
| Favourability | Mixed |
| Confidence | Confirmed |
| Review status | Not reviewed · 3 post-review updates · Not reviewed |
| Last collected | 18 Oct 2026 |
Summary answer
The 2024 amendment to the Law on Games of Chance equips the Games of Chance Administration with an expedited licence-revocation power, triggered where organised-crime involvement or unauthorised online-gambling activity is found. This power rests on DURABLE primary-legislation footing, but its pract…
The Administration for Games of Chance has intensified enforcement markedly since the January 2025 amendment package took effect. Licensed slot-machine venues fell from a 2024 peak of sixty-one to fifty, a confirmed figure drawn from Ministry of Finance data as reported through secondary industry coverage and corroborated by the regulator's own secondary-legislation register activity. Illegal machines have been seized and advertising-compliance sanctions issued as part of this enforcement drive. Consistent with the civil-law licensing-stack model, unlicensed operation is treated as an offence under the gambling statute itself rather than through a secondary licence-breach theory, though this cycle's evidence does not extend to a specifically documented safe-harbour doctrine or blocking-order mechanism for Serbia. The enabling Law on Games of Chance is durable; the enforcement activity itself and the implementing bylaws beneath it carry no fixed durability rating, meaning enforcement intensity could shift with administrative practice rather than requiring statutory change. No cross-border or payment-flow enforcement signal was sourced this cycle.
The Games of Chance Administration retains, and is actively exercising, the power to revoke licences immediately for organised-crime involvement or unapproved online-channel offering by licensed land-based operators, a power grounded in the durable November 2024 primary amendment (in force 6 December 2024). Under this authority the licensed slot-venue population has contracted from 61 at the 2024 peak to 50, alongside continued seizure of illegal machines, evidence assessed as probable confidence given its single-source basis. The online-channel enforcement theory is the clearest revocation-risk driver visible this cycle: a licensed retail operator extending into unapproved digital distribution is the profile the Administration has moved against. This distribution-channel enforcement basis is a carried-forward feature of the 2024 amendment rather than a new rule, but its active application this cycle, evidenced by the venue-count contraction, marks a tightening enforcement posture. No extraterritorial enforcement development was confirmed this cycle.
This cycle's enforcement-theory evidence is narrow: the only documented mechanism is the expedited licence-revocation power reaching licensees that offer unapproved online gambling through their own licensed shops, alongside the same power's organised-crime trigger. No claim this cycle addresses enforcement theory against operators with no Serbian licence at all, nor confirms whether blocking or criminal-referral mechanisms apply to genuinely unlicensed offshore operators. The exposure described here is therefore licensee-specific rather than a full unregulated-sector enforcement picture.