EditThe loophole: how Romanian influencers turn fun videos into gambling advertisement
The country has passed several laws in recent years that were meant to curb online gambling, yet almost none work as intended
Romania banned in 2023 celebrities and influencers from appearing in gambling advertising. The National Audiovisual Council (CNA) was clear: no public personalities – regardless of how famous, may use their notoriety to encourage gambling. Two years later, the rule exists on paper, but on TikTok and Instagram it is being massively bypassed every single day.
The loophole is simple and devastating: the law never defined what “notoriety” actually means. No minimum number of followers, no clear threshold. As long as creators avoid openly saying “I’m advertising a casino,” they consider themselves safe – and, so far, the authorities have proved unable to prove otherwise.
The perfect disguise: street challenges that end with a casino link
Eduard Vasile has half a million followers on TikTok and almost nine million likes. Almost every day he posts a new street video. The format rarely changes: he stops random people, asks a quick question – “What car is this door from?” or “How much do you think this watch costs?”, and promises spectacular prizes to whoever answers correctly. A BMW 7 Series, thousands of euros in cash, the latest iPhone.
The videos are fun, fast, addictive. They easily pick up tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of enthusiastic comments. Only in the final seconds does the real message appear.
“If you want this BMW, go to the link in my bio – who knows, it might be yours tomorrow.”
In this case, the link in the bio is a Linktree page that immediately redirects to an online casino offering free spins and deposit bonuses. Eduard Vasile earns a commission on every new player who registers and deposits through his personal affiliate code. The car giveaways are genuine (at least on the surface), but the terms almost always require the winner to create an account and make a deposit at the partner casino.
In ten recent contest videos we analysed, only three viewers noticed the gambling connection. One commented under the clip in which Vasile showed off his brand-new luxury car: “Why don’t you just admit the slot machines bought it for you and in a few months you’ll stick it behind the link in your bio anyway?”
The videos carry no age restriction. Any child with a phone can watch them, like them, and click straight through to a casino site.
Vasile is far from alone. Ovidiu Neveu, a fighter known from the RXF galas, has a similar casino affiliate link in his TikTok bio. Tzancă Uraganu, a frequent guest in Vasile’s videos, promotes a different Romanian casino on his own profile. Dozens of creators with audiences between 50 000 and 500 000 followers use exactly the same playbook: entertaining content first, subtle gambling nudge next.
Live from the casino: the new unregulated frontier
On TikTok and especially YouTube, gambling has gone fully live. Streamers sit in front of slot machines for hours, playing with real money while hundreds or thousands of viewers watch. Some organise tournaments between followers: whoever deposits money and wins the most in a set time receives a cash prize from the streamer. The streamer pockets affiliate revenue plus donations.
A simple YouTube search for “cazino live România” still returns hundreds of active streams in November.
What the regulator admits behind closed doors
CNA sources, speaking anonymously to PressOne, are unusually frank. The institution discovers violations almost exclusively through public complaints – from January to the end of October 2025 there were roughly 150, of which only 65 arrived through the official online form. When a violation is confirmed, the CNA asks the platform to remove the video. That is the full extent of the punishment. No fines for influencers, no fines for the affiliate companies that pay them.
“We want the lowest possible follower threshold for the definition of ‘notorious person’,” one source says. “Otherwise everyone with 50 000 followers will keep doing it.” Asked whether the current measures are sufficient, the same source replies: “I really don’t think it’s enough.”
Television is monitored far more strictly than the internet, the regulator acknowledges. When PressOne contacted Eduard Vasile through the company managing his affiliate programme, the administrator insisted everything was “promoted in accordance with the law”. A few days later Vasile quietly removed the link from his TikTok bio. It remains active on Instagram at the time of publication.
A string of half-measures
Romania has passed several laws in recent years that were meant to curb gambling, yet almost none work as intended.
Slot-machine parlours were banned in towns with fewer than 15 000 inhabitants in 2024; many simply sued and are still open. The national self-exclusion database for problem gamblers still has no functional system in 2025 – people who want to block themselves cannot do so. A new tax on gambling winnings was announced at 10 %, then quietly reduced to a symbolic increase from 3 % to 4 %. Bucharest City Hall is debating a ban on gambling billboards; the billboards have merely become smaller or been moved a few metres.
On 5 November a new bill was tabled to raise the minimum gambling age from 18 to 21. It is still in the very early stages.
Meanwhile Romanians spent €2.5 billion on online betting and casinos in the latest recorded year – roughly one in every ten card transactions in the country, not counting Revolut payments or cash spent in physical venues.
The original article in Romanian by EUalive’s media partner PressOne can be found here.
Caption: On TikTok and especially YouTube, gambling has gone fully live. Streamers sit in front of slot machines for hours, playing with real money while hundreds or thousands of viewers watch /PressOne.ro/
Updated: November 19, 2025 - 13:39
