From Poker Player to Regulated iGaming Founder: Andriy Kolomiyets on Building Casinolegal.ro

A lot of ex-pros who leave the felt end up staking, coaching, or writing content for someone else’s brand. Building a licensed iGaming business from scratch is a rarer path. Building one in Romania, where the regulator has been sharpening its teeth for a decade, is rarer still.

Andriy Kolomiyets picked the harder route. A former professional player with a background in both sports betting and poker, he spent more than fifteen years on the operator side of the business — senior roles at Sportradar and Spribe — before founding Casinolegal.ro. The platform launched in April 2026 after securing an ONJN Class II-a affiliate license.

It’s not the standard playbook for a player who’s left the tables.

The Poker Background

Kolomiyets got into gambling the way most professionals do: curious, decent with numbers, one thing led to another. Sports betting first, during university. Poker soon after. Eventually the results were consistent enough that he went pro. As he’s put it, that meant learning “every obstacle, every temptation, every mistake a player can make” from the inside.

The professional years didn’t last forever. He moved to the operator side and stayed there for a decade and a half. Senior positions at Sportradar and Spribe put him behind the curtain — pricing models, B2B slot supplier negotiations, compliance conversations with regulators across jurisdictions. Three angles, in order: player, operator, and now founder.

Romania wasn’t a spreadsheet decision. Kolomiyets first went to Bucharest as a football fan during Euro 2021, when Austria-Ukraine was played at Arena Națională. He kept going back. “I fell in love with the people and the vibe of Bucharest,” he says. “And Romanian food, of course.” Eventually the numbers made sense too, and the regulator was serious. He decided to build there.

The Founder’s Bet: Editorial Over Conversion

Kolomiyets has been public about what he thinks is wrong with affiliate publishing. “I see a trust issue when it comes to affiliates in Romania. Players are tired of affiliate landing pages that offer zero value and just serve to convert. No bonus details, no actual casino experience shared by players for players.”

The criticism isn’t new. The response is. Instead of squeezing more conversion out of the same tired template, he built Casinolegal.ro on the opposite bet — that a serious editorial standard could actually compete in a saturated market. Slower growth, harder work, fewer commercial shortcuts.

This isn’t cheap talk. It means turning down deals that would compromise a review. It means publishing what’s wrong with an operator alongside what’s right. It means giving up short-term revenue for long-term standing. Someone who spent fifteen years inside operators knows exactly what those trade-offs cost.

“Editorial independence ends when assessments are influenced by commercial relationships,” he has put it. “Casinolegal.ro has zero tolerance for that: our verdicts and conclusions are not for sale.” The rest of the operation follows from there.

Romania as a Regulatory Case Study

Kolomiyets is clear about how he reads the market. “Romania is one of the best regulated, safest online casino markets in the EU and the world. ONJN has established high standards and rules for casinos and their affiliates.” Given his fifteen years inside operators, that’s not casual praise.

The licensed route isn’t cheap. Fatboyscanrun Ltd, the UK-registered parent company Kolomiyets set up, secured the ONJN Class II-a license through the full regulatory process. “Listen, I want to do things the right way. Even if it is expensive or takes a long time,” he says. No shortcuts. No offshore trick. A Bucharest law firm managed the entire legal process, from translating the UK corporate documents to obtaining a Romanian tax registration (CIF) and preparing the application for the ONJN licence. 

The ongoing costs match the posture. €20,000 a year for the license. Another €15,000 a year committed to Romanian anti-gambling-addiction initiatives.

That posture — the willingness to pay real money for regulatory alignment when cheaper alternatives exist — is what separates the story from the standard affiliate pitch.

Building the Team Around the Vision

Kolomiyets brought in Baicu Marius as Editor-in-Chief. Marius has fifteen years in the sector: content author at PariuriX (Better Collective) from 2011, Head of Content by 2019, then editorial lead at Casinos Ro, which he built from scratch starting in 2020. He signs on to the same line as the founder: “Editorial independence is non-negotiable — commercial partnerships will never dictate our verdicts, as we refuse to compromise our credibility for profit.”

Eduard Delcea covers casino reviews, bonus analysis, and slots, and adds sports betting and eSports on top. Nicolae Petre Mihai runs video for YouTube and Instagram. Andrei Ionuț Roșu handles publication and quality control. Every author is publicly identified with a bio and traceable credentials.

Casinolegal.ro publishes reviews with pros and cons on every operator. “If a player leaves a complaint about a casino, we do our best to clarify and resolve the issue,” Kolomiyets explains. “Otherwise, the rating of the casino may go down.” That’s editorial consequences applied to commercial relationships — the kind of mechanism most affiliate publishers avoid on principle. Content is monitored in real time and updated when operator terms change.

Baicu Marius describes the review methodology in similar terms: “Our reviews follow a rigorous methodology focused on what players care about most: licensing, withdrawal speed, bonus terms, and KYC efficiency. We choose in-depth, practical analysis over marketing fluff.”

The Player’s Mindset in the Founder’s Chair

The way Kolomiyets talks about gambling will sound familiar to anyone who’s played for money. He describes it as “paid entertainment” — the deposit is the price of the show, the entertainment is what you get for it. In his framing: “You should be ready to lose it and should not risk more than you spend on beer in a bar.”

It’s bankroll thinking, not casino marketing. Detach from variance. Think in EV. Treat sessions as sample size. Any tournament grinder knows the drill.

That mindset shows up in how the platform speaks to users. No fake urgency. No manipulative copy. No hiding unfavourable terms in the fine print. Age restrictions and warnings on every page. Bonus terms explained in full, including the parts operators would rather bury. Self-exclusion mechanisms documented, not tucked into a footer link.

Kolomiyets’s line on it is characteristically direct: “If a website converts but harms people, it’s a bad business. And we stand against that.”

Baicu Marius adds context on how the audience has evolved. “Romanian players are far better informed today than they were 10 to 15 years ago. While bonuses used to be the main deciding factor, players now pay much closer attention to an operator’s reputation, licensing, withdrawal speed, promotional terms, and responsible gambling tools. Access to more information has made players more selective, which also raises the standards for affiliate websites.”

The Bigger Picture

The Romanian story fits a wider pattern. As regulation tightens across the main European jurisdictions — Germany’s GGL, the UK’s Gambling Commission, Italy’s ADM restrictions — affiliate publishing is splitting in two. Commercial operators chasing conversion. Editorial publishers building on regulatory alignment.

Kolomiyets is founding in the second camp, and he says so directly. “We at Fatboyscanrun Ltd want the market to treat Casinolegal.ro as the reference point, alongside giants like PariuriX, and not as yet another affiliate page.”

Whether it works will show up over the next few years in the metrics that count — traffic quality, operator relationships, regulator standing, reputation with players.

Conclusion

Ex-pros crossing into iGaming isn’t news. Kolomiyets’s project is a different kind of story: a licensed platform in one of Europe’s tougher regulatory environments, built on the theory that discipline and transparency are competitive advantages rather than costs.

Whether that theory holds up in Romanian market conditions is the question that matters. What’s already visible is the setup — publicly identified authors, verifiable corporate structure, disclosed license fees, an editorial methodology on the page rather than in a pitch deck. For a founder with fifteen years of operator experience and a professional player’s read on discipline, that setup isn’t accidental.

The original interview published in Libertatea has more detail in Romanian, including Kolomiyets’s read on where Romania sits inside the broader European iGaming picture.