How Betsson ‘cleansed’ its operations in Poland

On March 20, 2024, the Betsson Group established a new company called Alta Platform Gaming Limited, registered in Malta. This was the entity responsible for launching the Betsmith brand. The company was registered at the same address as Betsson’s headquarters.

Just a few months later, in December 2024, Betsson transferred Alta Platform Gaming Ltd to another entity – Alta Platform Holdings Limited, also registered in Malta and at the same address as Betsson.

Documents obtained by the iGaming Express editorial team indicate that Alta Platform Holdings Limited took over 240,000 shares with a nominal value of 1 euro each – a total of 240,000 euros. 20% of the shares were paid up immediately, amounting to 48,000 euros.

The transfer was approved by the Malta Business Registry on December 31, 2024. From that moment, the holding company owned the operational entity of Betsmith.

Clean slate for 1,200 euros?

The next step was transferring the shares in Alta Platform Holdings Limited to an individual – Lorang Wolmar Anders. The transaction took place on January 15, 2025. The nominal value of this share package was 1,200 euros.

The sale price raises questions. The new owner acquired a player base with hundreds of thousands of records for the equivalent of a used Volkswagen.

On March 28, 2025, Lorang Wolmar Anders resold all shares in the holding company to APHL Limited – a company he himself had established eight days earlier.

This way, Betsson severed its direct ties with the Betsmith brand. The operational company, domains, infrastructure, and player database were transferred to a new entity that, formally, has nothing to do with the group’s previous structure.

Whether this amounts to a real separation or just a change of labels is a question we leave to our readers.

Players transferred without consent

Since the amendment to Poland’s Gambling Act in 2017, which clearly defines which bookmakers can operate legally, Betsson had functioned as an offshore operator. The company accepted Polish players and targeted them with marketing. The clearest confirmation of this is its inclusion in the official blacklist of banned domains maintained by the Ministry of Finance. This is an objective legal assessment made by the authority responsible for overseeing the Polish gambling market.

With the change of ownership came the reassignment of domains, including those with characteristic numbers in their names – e.g. betsson22.com, betsmith23.com – indicating an attempt to circumvent the blacklist of banned domains maintained by the Ministry of Finance. These types of rotating domains are a typical tool used by offshore operators to continue providing services despite being blocked.

In the case of Betsmith, the brand changed, but the operating scheme remained the same. Technical infrastructure, the user panel, and player accounts continued uninterrupted. The Betsson database (logins, passwords, account balances, transaction history, and personal data) was transferred to the new offshore entity. No information was provided to players, nor were they asked for consent. Betsmith’s customer service confirmed to us that users could log in with the same credentials as before, without the need for re-registration.

Throughout the operation, clients did not receive any official communication about the data transfer. Only in early June 2025, after the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) approved the acquisition of Bukmacherska sp. z o.o. (the licensed operator of Fuksiarz), did Betsson send an email with information about technical changes and a new login address. The message was sent from a Betsson domain.

The communication contained no mention of a change in operator, data transfer, new ownership structure, or the fact that the service was operating under a different brand. It was simply a redirection – carried out by a company that formally declares it has no ties to Betsmith.

This raises a key question: how was that possible if the two companies are now supposedly independent? If Betsson had truly sold Betsmith and offloaded the player database, why was it still actively communicating with the same users?

Cleanup before entering the Polish market

The entire operation coincided with preparations for acquiring Fuksiarz. Betsson submitted its application to UOKiK before the sale of Betsmith was finalized, and approval was granted in March 2025 – shortly after the Maltese registry approved the ownership changes in the structure behind Betsmith.

According to the current gambling law, a prior listing in the banned domains register does not disqualify a company from applying for a Polish license, provided it is no longer conducting illegal activity.

In practice, this means that after years of offering sports betting and online casino services to Polish users in breach of national law (later limited to online casino) — the company’s operations can now be considered formally “clean.”

As a result, Betsson is able to present itself as a transparent and trustworthy actor, eligible to acquire a controlling stake in Fuksiarz or apply for a Polish license. The fact that it had previously been blacklisted by the Ministry of Finance does not preclude this, as long as the company no longer targets Polish users at the time of application.

So what are the legal consequences of having violated Polish gambling regulations for years? None.

Did no one at Betsson really retain influence over operations, given that an email informing about technical changes was sent from a Betsson domain six months later? Was migrating data without user consent to a new offshore entity compliant with GDPR?

If this is what a “clean entry” into the Polish market looks like, are the current regulations just a fiction? We are planning further publications on Betsson in the coming days.