Bulgarian gambling affiliates have until 15 August to file a licence application with the National Revenue Agency (NRA) or lose the right to promote licensed operators in the country.

The requirement comes from amendments to the Gambling Act carried in § 34 of the Transitional and Final Provisions of Bulgaria’s State Budget Act for 2026, which the National Assembly passed on 24 July, the President signed on 29 July and the State Gazette published on 31 July. The affiliate regime took effect on 1 August. The 15 August cut-off applies to anyone who, as of 1 August, already had a contract or arrangement in place to promote gambling games. The NRA has since published guidance setting out how the new licensing regime works.

The law captures affiliates that receive remuneration linked to agreed performance indicators: players referred, deposits made, bets placed or gambling revenue generated. It does not capture advertising agencies paid on a flat fee, which keeps conventional media buying outside the licensing net and puts the boundary squarely on how the money is calculated rather than what the content looks like.

What the licence costs

The state fee has two parts. Affiliates pay a fixed annual licence maintenance fee of €6,000. On top of that, gambling operators must withhold and remit to the NRA a variable fee equal to 10% of the performance-based remuneration they pay their affiliate partners, paid monthly.

The Act adds an anti-avoidance provision. If an operator and an affiliate use simulated transactions to disguise result-linked commission as something else, the variable fee doubles to 20% of the concealed amount.

There is a compensating measure. Commission income on which the variable fee has been paid is not recognised for tax purposes under the Corporate Income Tax Act and is treated as non-taxable income under the Personal Income Tax Act. Related expenses are likewise unrecognised for corporate tax. That relief is withdrawn where the transaction is found to be sham.

Estimates of what the measures raise vary. Reporting at the time the budget passed put the additional annual tax take from gambling at around €100m. Bulgarian coverage since has cited Ministry of Finance expectations of up to €150m from the affiliate measures.

Affiliates enter the advertising regime

The bigger operational change is that licensed affiliates now sit inside Bulgaria’s gambling advertising rules for the first time, with dedicated sanctions for breaches.

Those rules are already among the tightest in the European Union. Amendments signed into law in 2024 banned gambling advertising from television, radio, print and online. Outdoor advertising survives only on billboards, without numbers or bonus offers, at least 100 metres from schools, and carrying a responsible gambling message across a minimum of 10% of the ad space. The Council for Electronic Media monitors compliance and refers breaches to the NRA, which can impose fines of up to BGN 50,000 (€25,570) and revoke licences for repeat offences.

Affiliates applying for a licence must declare every website, mobile application, social media account and video streaming channel they intend to use to promote gambling. The NRA gains the power to block sites, apps and social pages run by unlicensed affiliates. Licensed affiliates may promote licensed operators only, which restates a principle Bulgaria has applied to operators for years and now extends to the people selling them traffic.

Enforcement speed changes too. The NRA’s blacklist of illegal gambling operators moves from monthly updates to daily.

The sites in scope

Bulgaria’s gambling traffic is dominated by operators rather than affiliates. Semrush data for June 2026 puts winbet.bg first in the country’s gambling category with 8.73 million monthly visits, ahead of efbet.com on 2.83 million and palmsbet.com on 2.52 million.

Below the operators sits a smaller cluster of publisher sites, and these are the properties the new regime is aimed at. Five names account for most of the visible affiliate activity in the market.

1. Tipsters BG (tipster.bg)

The largest non-operator property in Bulgaria’s gambling category, with 619,490 monthly visits in June 2026, according to Semrush. It runs Bulgarian-language football fixtures, odds and predictions, and its match pages carry bet365 affiliate tracking links. That places it squarely inside the performance-based definition.

2. AskGamblers

The most prominent international affiliate brand serving Bulgarian players, running a dedicated Bulgaria section with casino reviews, bonus listings and a player complaints service. It is the clearest case of the regime’s cross-border reach: the site is operated from outside Bulgaria but earns result-linked commission from operators licensed inside it. The Act sets no domestic establishment carve-out, so foreign-run affiliates promoting Bulgarian-licensed brands face the same licence.

3. Nostrabet (nostrabet.com)

A bookmaker and casino comparison brand with 134,340 monthly Bulgarian visits in June 2026 on Semrush’s measure, built on operator reviews, bonus listings and sign-up offers.

4. Big Board Win

A Bulgarian-facing sports betting and casino review site working the same review-and-bonus model, on a smaller traffic base than the market leaders. Sites at this scale are where the fixed €6,000 fee bites hardest.

5. Bookmaker Ratings BG (bookmaker-ratings.bg)

The Bulgarian edition of a multi-market bookmaker review network, on 104,440 monthly visits. Semrush records search as its main traffic source, the signature of an SEO-led affiliate rather than a brand-driven publisher. Bulgaria-bonusesfinder.com, a bonus aggregator on 95,840 visits, sits immediately behind it.

The definitional edge is already visible in the data. Betinum.com, a paid football tipping service on 127,590 monthly visits, states on its own homepage that it is not an affiliate partner, carries no bookmaker links and criticises sites that “earn 30% of your losses”. Subscription revenue of that kind is not tied to referred players or deposits, which on the face of the Act leaves it outside the licensing net.

The spread between these sites matters for how the fee lands. A fixed €6,000 annual charge is a rounding error against 620,000 monthly visits and a routine cost against 130,000. Against the long tail of Bulgarian-language blogs, Telegram channels and YouTube accounts monetised on revenue share, it is the whole business. Bulgaria’s affiliate market is likely to consolidate around the handful of sites that can absorb the fixed cost, and the traffic at the smaller end will either move to licensed larger partners or move offshore.

For market context, the operator side of the picture is set out in our Bulgaria iGaming market report.

What operators have to do

The compliance burden does not stop at the affiliates. Licensed operators must verify that every affiliate partner holds a licence, restructure marketing contracts so the 10% variable fee is withheld and remitted correctly, and make sure existing relationships comply before the regime is fully bedded in. The withholding mechanism makes the operator the collection point, which means an operator paying an unlicensed affiliate is exposed regardless of what the affiliate did or failed to do.

Bulgaria is not moving alone. Regulators across Europe have spent the past two years pulling affiliate marketing closer to the licensed perimeter as concerns build over advertising standards, consumer protection and the promotion of unlicensed operators. Greece opened a consultation on gambling reform aimed at the black market in June, against a backdrop of unregulated online gambling turnover reaching $5.9tn in 2025. What separates Bulgaria is that it has attached a price to the licence and made operators collect it.

The immediate question is how many applications the NRA receives before 15 August, and what it does about the affiliates that do not file. The blocking powers are new, the deadline is eight days out, and the agency has spent the summer without a permanent Director of Gambling Policy after Alexander Popov left the post on 18 June.

 

 

 

Source: Bulgarian National Assembly | theigaming