Rejoice, it is time to continue our grand tour of jurisdictions!

From the lowlands of the Netherlands we board a short flight west, hop over Flanders Bight and wave to the UKGC from the window seat before landing between the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

Like many countries in this series, The Emerald Isle has a long and storied history which is intertwined with gambling to varying degrees over the centuries. Some even claim that the earliest records of chariot racing in the region date back to the dawn of time. Or around year zero of the western timekeeping to be exact.

But in 2026 the Irish and the recently formed Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI) are about to embark on possibly the biggest transformation yet as Ireland opens their online gambling market to the licensing model. It has been a centuries long road to this point, but what can we expect from the market and the licensing? Will there really be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Will the Luck of the Irish help the operators or the local punters?

We recommend that you sit back, pour yourself a pint of Guinness (go for the 0% if you wish, we are working after all) and let us explore what the beautiful Éire has to offer.

From Curragh to Paddy Power

Okay, we stated the “year zero” earlier, but we feel like we should clarify this slightly. Estimates of how long gambling has been a thing on this island ranges from 100 BC to the 3rd century, but the consensus seems to be that chariot racing, which historically comes with a side of wagers, has taken place on Irish soil for roughly 2000 years or so.

Truly reliable records from that far back are kind of hard to come by, but we can state with significant confidence that horse racing made its way over from England in the 17th century and took the country by storm. Records from the time show that 400 or so locations where one could bet on the ponies were active in 1751.

The first Betting Act came to power only a few centuries later in 1926, putting horse racing and other similar activities behind a government licensing and making sure that if you wanted to operate, you needed to be above board. With sports like rugby, football and traditional Irish sports under the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) growing rapidly in popularity, a further expansion of the regulations was introduced in 1962. This paved the way for the morden landscape and brands like Paddy Power, a true gambling megapower, which was formed in 1988 (author’s note: A great year to be born, by the way).

Fast forward to March of 2025 and we are just in time to witness the birth of Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland, the independent government agency which will be overseeing the gambling landscape and licensing of sports betting, casino games, their suppliers and charitable gambling ventures in both online and in-person. The Irish National Lottery, also known as An Crannchur Náisiúnta, which has been operating since 1987 will remain under the stewardship of the Regulator of the National Lottery.

The first sports betting licenses under the new legislation became active on 1st of July, 2026 and the GRAI website currently lists 35 entities who hold an active B2C license, transferred from Irish Tax and Customs to GRAI in February 2026. As you would expect, the list contains a smorgasbord of who’s who in the gambling industry: Paddy Power, Betfair, 888, LeoVegas, Kindred, Entain, William Hill and bet365 to name a few.

The way of the Hibernians

As the current set of regulations has been written in the last few years, the incoming regulatory body has had plenty of case studies from their fellow European nations showing them what to do…and especially what not to do.

Largely speaking, they seem to have heeded these learnings well and the initial regulations are a reasonable middle ground between control and freedom to operate. If you are familiar with even an overview of any of the European licensing requirements, the Irish regulations will feel quite homely to you. That being said, the regulatory body has smartly already laid foundations on the possibility of tightening the regulations if they so deem necessary in the future.

We can only hope that these will be educated decisions made as a collaboration of experts and robust data, instead of just vibes (looking at you, politicians of the Netherlands).

As mentioned above, the first sports betting (Remote Betting) licenses became active in July 2026, but GRAI has not yet opened applications for the casino, or “Remote Gaming”, licenses. The same applies for the B2B supplier licenses and these two alongside the Charitable/Philanthropic licenses will be phased in throughout between late 2026 and sometime in 2028.

The cost of a license 3-year is based on the company turnover and the 10-tier brackets on GRAI website tell us that the cost of a B2C sports betting license starts from 20,000 EUR if your turnover is below 250,000 EUR and tops out at 400,000 EUR if your turnover is north of 200 million EUR.

A B2C casino license follows similar lines; lowest bracket (below 500k turnover) is 20,000 EUR and operators with 50mil+ turnover have to fork out a fee of 450,000 EUR. The application time is stated as “3-6” months, which is both quite broad but also common for jurisdictions across Europe.

Players are offered the option of setting limits upon account creation, or any other time, but they do not have a regulatory requirement to do so. What is slightly different to most markets is that players cannot lower or remove the limits for a set period of time and if limits are exceeded for any reason, the exceeding amount must be refunded by the operator within 7 days.

During sessions, users will also be shown alerts on regular intervals showing the amount of time they have gambled, their total spend and as well as wins and losses. As in any reputable jurisdiction, the use of credit cards and any electronic methods which can be funded with credit cards are banned completely.

Player protection is of course also in the forefront when it comes to the marketing aspects of the legislation with particular focus on vulnerable individuals, minors and the general public as a whole. Social and other internet media advertising is restricted however, with only individuals who follow the gambling company’s account(s) AND have an account with the operator in question counting as the legal target audience. There is also a strict watershed in place and gambling ads are banned from television and radio between 05.30 and 21.00 in an effort to minimise any gambling advertising reaching minors.

And if you do not comply with the regulations? Revoking your license(s), fines up to 20 million euros (or 10% of your turnover) and up to eight years in prison for the most egregious breaches. Our strong professional recommendation is to stick to the guardrails set by the legislation.

As a sidenote, the GRAI website contains very comprehensive information about all their regulations, packaged in a very digestible format so finding all this information was extremely easy. For that, I give you a chapeau.

Operators vs Suppliers vs…philantrophic gambling?

Where the Irish market also differs slightly from the common “two-prong” system of B2C and B2B is that they have added a third element; a “Charitable/Philanthropic Licence”. Before we look into what that means, we should establish that remote B2C licenses are also split to four versions: Remote Lottery Licence, Remote Gaming Licence (casino), Remote Betting Licence (sports) and a Remote Betting Intermediary Licence.

The fourth entry on the list allows the operation of betting exchanges as well as P2P betting platforms, which allows operators such as FanDuel or DraftKings and other Fantasy Sports companies to enter the Irish market with a specific license. Many of the enormous US-based companies, such as the two mentioned, have explored avenues into Europe for quite some time now and this license type might offer an attractive entry point for them.

While one of the B2C license types is already active, we are still awaiting information regarding the B2B licensing and when suppliers can actually start applying for them. GRAI website does give a short list of the types of companies who would need to apply for a B2B license such as odds providers, hosting services, risk and fraud management, software related companies and interestingly also “Services to implement measures to protect and safeguard participants”. This raises the question if consultancies who want to operate in the Irish market would also need a license of some nature from GRAI, but this remains to be seen.

Now, what is philanthropic gambling? If you guessed “any activity which would be classified as gambling but the proceeds of such venture go towards charitable or philanthropic purposes”, give yourself a pat on the shoulder and sleep soundly in the knowledge that you are clearly a smart cookie. This license comes with strict limits however: a lottery can pay out 30,000 EUR per week or any game 3,000 EUR per game, with one-off activities capped to 360,000 EUR for both of these. The winnings from Pool Betting are unrestricted, so it has great potential to become a popular charitable venture.

Death, taxes and…more taxes.

So what impact will this have on the market and the people of Ireland? In my moderately educated opinion, it is always beneficial for the state to bring gambling under their own control, for both economic and social reasons. Receiving data directly from the operators on regular, predictable intervals and being able to collect your own additional data to support it while having a designated regulatory body to oversee things is always going to improve things if done correctly.

Tax revenue is something that is always a big motivator for these decisions and before the market is fully open and all of the new license types are even being awarded, there is talk about increasing the tax from 1% to 2% on the total amount staked by the players. This has been met with discontent from the operators who, for obvious reasons, don’t want to pay more tax and are using the potential of channelisation to black market as their primary concern.

The Irish Bookmakers Association (IBA) has pointed out that when the same duty increase (from 1% to 2%) was introduced to brick and mortar betting shops, 200+ shops closed and thousands of jobs were lost. It’s difficult to argue with hard numbers, but it’s also dismissive to not take into account the undeniable fact that gambling is moving online at breakneck speed and betting shops have been on life support for years.

Not everyone is opposing a tax increase however, as one one of the co-founders of Paddy Power has stated that he would prefer a 40% tax on online betting and casino revenue. This would match the tax percentage introduced by the UKGC in April 2026 and introducing such a high tax is not something you hear every day from an industry juggernaut.

As the regulatory landscape is otherwise seemingly attractive and allows operators freedoms that other European markets do not, I’m sceptical that the tax rise would deter casinos from entering the Irish market. But as always, time will tell how this prediction fares against reality.

So far so good

The next few years will bring a seismic shift in the Irish gambling landscape, online or otherwise, with the introduction of the new licenses and undoubtedly some very big players trying to grab their share of the pot of gold that may or may not wait at the end of the Irish rainbow.

Introducing and starting to grant the new types licenses on a phased schedule rather than opening all the floodgates at once is a smart approach. This allows GRAI to polish their internal processes, bridge gaps and make course corrections on the fly, most likely resulting in a much more controlled situation while avoiding insanely long waiting times. This also allows the operators to get their ducks in a row, as preparing is much easier when you can more or less predict what happens and when.

There are currently 50 operational whiskey distilleries and 35 licensed online gambling operators in Ireland and if I was betting man, I would wager on the gambling industry coming in fast on the inside lane and romping ahead in a few short years.

Fáilte go hÉirinn – tír na ndeiseanna go deimhin!