Experts suggest that 1xBet is the world’s biggest visible illegal sports betting operator.
In the recent UEFA Champions League final, Paris Saint-Germain ended a long wait for continental supremacy. The win marked a major milestone for the dominant French club of the past fifteen years. It was also a victory for one of their sponsors, online sports betting and casino operator 1xBet. Just weeks earlier, La Liga officially crowned FC Barcelona—another team sponsored by 1xBet—as Spanish champions.
Yet for others, the victory was hard to swallow. That includes regulatory bodies trying to control an online gambling industry that has grown almost unchecked over the past fifteen years.
Corentin Segalen, president of the Copenhagen Group established under the Macolin Convention to combat sports manipulation and illegal betting, described 1XBet as the “Wagner Group of sports betting.” He told Byline Times that the company operates fearlessly outside the law, fuels corruption, and aggressively targets the African market.
The parallel with mercenary army was not a throwaway line with Vladimir Putin. Segalen was also referring to the operator’s murky ties to the Russian regime. Byline Times now reveals the first in-depth investigation into the 1XBet betting empire published in the UK. President Zelenskyy personally ordered sanctions and restrictions on 1XBet in Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion. This decision highlights the significance of 1XBet’s connections to the Russian regime.
The scale of 1xBet’s operation is hard to believe. Yet, it matches the vast size of the illegal gambling industry as a whole. In a December 2021 report, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated the industry’s value at $1.7 trillion. That’s equal to the combined GDP of all Scandinavian countries—or nearly three times the global narcotics trade.
