Key Points
- As of 1 May 2026, the LAKIS system in Lithuania will apply to all remote gambling platforms, meaning that operators will be required to submit player activity information to the Gaming Control Authority at least once every 30 days.
- It is thanks to two TRIS notifications by the European Commission in 2024 and 2025 that the application scope of the system is being extended, covering responsible gambling and AML supervision for the first time.
- Total gambling turnover in Lithuania amounted to €274.1 million in 2025, up 13% from 2024, while online gambling accounted for €202.4 million of it.
Lithuania has been assembling something piece by piece for nearly a decade. Not a revised licensing tier or a single enforcement measure, but a connected data infrastructure that now reaches from land-based slot machines through to remote gambling platforms. On 1 May 2026, that build-out reached a clear milestone: remote gambling operators became required to connect to LAKIS, the Gaming Control Authority’s central information system, and transmit player data to the regulator on at least a monthly basis.
Most commentary on Lithuania has been absorbed by the proposed player card or the advertising restrictions. LAKIS draws far less attention, yet it is the infrastructure through which every other supervisory tool is designed to operate.
A System That Started With Slot Machines in 2018
LAKIS, the Gaming Machine Control Information System, was established by the Gaming Control Authority (LPT) as a state-administered database. Its original remit was strictly land-based: machine identification data, operational records, and electronic meter readings from gambling terminals across the country. The 2018 regulations also included an automated audit function that verified operator-submitted data against set rules and cross-checked machine checksums at the point of transmission.
That framework held for years before Lithuania moved to extend it. In July 2024, the Ministry of Finance informed the European Commission on the draft changes to the Gaming Law, according to the TRIS 2024/0381/LT notification. These changes, enacted in November 2024 by Law No. XIV-3080, imposed a duty upon remote platforms to identify and register the players, as well as to document any gambling. LAKIS was formally redefined as a state information system covering not only machine and casino-table data but also platform data, linked directly to both responsible gambling and AML supervision.
A second TRIS notification followed in February 2025. Licensed operators were required to ensure, at their own expense, that their platforms are accredited by independent bodies and that those platforms undergo certified inspections covering centralised player identification and data-collection controls. Those requirements took effect in November 2025. The LAKIS expansion followed six months later, once platforms had been certified and the transmission rules were confirmed.
Revenue Growth Created the Urgency
It was implemented during a period when the industry was far from stagnation. The country’s gambling market saw gross revenue of €274.1 million in 2025, which marked an increase of 13% YoY. Online gambling contributed €202.4 million of the revenue – about 74% of the market activity. Remote gambling showed a gain of 19% within the year, while revenues from land-based gambling remained unchanged at €71.7 million. During the last 15 years, gross gambling revenue increased almost fivefold, from €12.9 million in 2010 to €241.9 million in 2024.
This kind of development was followed by a growing number of harm-related metrics. There are about 20,000 citizens of Lithuania who have active self-exclusion registrations, while according to LPT, there are many more people affected by gambling problems. 18,710 applications to block gambling access were received by the regulator in 2025, showing a 14% increase compared to the previous year. 2,017 illegal gambling websites have been detected by the regulator during the year, including 208 newly blocked websites.
The AML Connection That Competitors Have Missed
One detail largely absent from outside reporting is LAKIS’s explicit link to anti-money laundering supervision. The official rationale attached to the 2024 TRIS notification stated that integrating platform data into LAKIS would allow the LPT to monitor operators’ compliance with both responsible gambling requirements and AML obligations within the same data environment.
That matters because AML and responsible gambling compliance have historically been treated as parallel but separate tracks. Putting them inside a shared data system changes the logic of both. A player’s deposit frequency, bet sizes, and declared income become part of a single regulatory view rather than two datasets handled separately.
That expectation has already produced enforcement. A fine of more than €300,000 was imposed on an operator that failed to collect and assess information about a client’s source of funds and could not show that the amounts wagered matched the data it held on that individual. Arnoldas Dilba, Head of the Legal Division at the GCA, has confirmed that KYC must be applied not only at registration but on an ongoing basis, with bet patterns and deposit frequency assessed continuously against player profiles. Operators cannot cite AML obligations to impose unilateral player restrictions unless those measures were set out in advance in publicly published gambling rules, a position confirmed by Lithuania’s Supreme Administrative Court.
Sanctions That Scale With the Market
The enforcement framework running alongside LAKIS has also changed. Lithuania replaced fixed administrative fines, previously capped at €25,000, with revenue-linked penalties ranging from 2% to 10% of a company’s annual turnover, depending on the nature and repetition of the violation. Dilba put the principle plainly: “For operators holding a larger market share and experiencing more growth, the potential sanctions increase correspondingly, thereby integrating the very logic of growth into the deterrence mechanism.”
Fixed fines lose their deterrent effect in a market growing at 13% annually. Revenue-linked penalties do not. The shift is structurally deliberate, and it applies to a market where the regulator now holds live data feeds.
Where the Player Card Fits In?
This data architecture that already exists forms the basis of what Lithuania plans to establish next. A draft amendment was submitted by the Ministry of Finance on 2 April 2026 for a mandatory card for all gamblers, irrespective of whether they participate in online gaming or in a physical casino, starting 1 January 2029. This card will ensure that deposits as well as earnings of each player are pooled together in one system from all licensed operators, and cash transactions in gambling venues will be completely phased out within three years.
Dilba explained the core problem the card addresses: existing responsible gambling controls work only at the level of a single operator. A player who reaches a deposit limit with one company can immediately move to another, circumventing restrictions as many times as they choose. “The card would also become the primary tool of responsible gambling policy. It would allow a single, sector-wide limit to be set, one that would prevent the current practice whereby a player, having exhausted the limit with one operator, simply moves to another and thereby circumvents it,” he said.
Similar systems exist in Poland and Norway, but only for land-based slot machines. Germany operates a centralised deposit-tracking database capped at €1,000 per month, without a physical card. Sweden maintains a self-exclusion register and deposit limits, but has no cross-operator transaction monitoring. Lithuania’s proposed model would be the first in the EU to combine mandatory player identification, full cross-operator monitoring, and a cashless mandate across both online and land-based gambling at the same time.
Finance Minister Kristupas Vaitiekūnas addressed the concern raised by the Lithuanian Responsible Gambling Business Association that tighter restrictions push players towards illegal platforms: “It strengthens the prevention of problem gambling and ensures that the main objective, reducing access to gambling and its potential harm to health, is actually achieved.”
Expert Analysis
What Lithuania has built is a supervisory model that operates continuously rather than periodically. Certification establishes whether a system can be trusted at source. LAKIS collects and analyses data from that certified system in real time. Revenue-linked fines ensure deterrence does not erode as the market grows. The player card, once enacted, closes the final gap: a player’s ability to move freely between operators and reset their limits at each stop.
For operators, the compliance question has shifted. Passing a technical audit at the point of certification is no longer the endpoint. The live question is whether an operator’s systems can perform, month after month, inside a regulator that now holds data from the entire licensed market at once. In Lithuania, LAKIS is where that question gets answered.
Share
2 views
