On 1 January 2019, the Albanian government banned all forms of betting both online, and land-based.
Only one land-based casino license was issued to sApex-al/Adria Entertainment which is located in a 5-star hotel.
Prime Minister Edi Rama announced there would be a crackdown on online gambling and that a special task force would be set up to block access to foreign sites offering any form of gambling.
Over a week after the ban, Exit found that 47% of some of the 100 most popular online gambling sites were still accessible from an Albanian IP address. Furthermore, they accepted Albanian customers. The remaining 53% displayed a message saying that the site could not be accessed.
Almost two years later, Exit conducted further research on the same 100 sites and found that 42% of all sites were still accessible from an Albanian IP. Again, they still accepted Albanian customers.
That means that in two years, the ‘specialist taskforce’ managed to block access to a total of five sites.
