Telephone companies have been instructed to block access to all unlicensed online gambling websites operating in Sri Lanka, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) has said.
The Director General of the TRCSL said the step was taken on the instructions of the Gambling Regulatory Authority.
The commission did not publicly identify the sites covered by the order, state how many platforms are affected, or say when operators must complete the blocking.
Closing a long-standing gap
The order is the first concrete enforcement action against online gambling platforms since the sector’s new regulator was established, and it addresses a gap that has been raised repeatedly in Parliament.
In June, the Chair of the Committee on Public Finance, MP Dr. Harsha de Silva, demanded that a regulator be appointed for online betting and casino platforms, telling officials that operators were advertising during cricket telecasts while using the Sri Lankan government logo and claiming to be licensed. He described the absence of oversight as a “massive legal blind spot” costing the state billions of rupees in uncollected revenue.
Sri Lanka’s older framework, the Casino Business (Regulation) Act of 2010, governs physical casino floors and does not reach the online and mobile platforms that have proliferated since. Deputy Minister of Industries Chathuranga Abeysinghe said later in June that the government intends to tax online betting, but only once the sector is properly regulated and licensing rules are in force.
Blocking at the network level is the most direct tool available to the authorities, though it is an imperfect one — access can often be restored through mirror domains or virtual private networks, and enforcement typically requires the regulator to keep an updated blocklist.
Hiru News was the only verified newsroom to carry the announcement at the time of writing, and neither the TRCSL nor the Gambling Regulatory Authority had published a fuller statement.
