According to the official data of the Administration for Games of Chance, during December last year, a total of 2.867 were operating in Serbia bookmaker i casino, and with this figure, our country occupies one of the leading places in Europe in terms of the number of betting shops and casinos in relation to the number of inhabitants. The only European country that is ahead of Serbia in this criterion is Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The report of the Gaming Authority says that in 2024, 2.915 facilities were registered, while in 2023, 2.987, and in 2022, 3.023 establishments of this type were operating. Although there is a noticeable slight decrease in the number of places for organizing special games of chance, Serbia is still at the top of Europe.
Of the almost 3.000 facilities that are betting and gambling houses, a large part of the premises that make up these numbers are in Belgrade. For them, however, there are no official statistics, only guesswork.
Betting shops on every corner in Belgrade
However, the general impression is that there are betting facilities "on every corner" in the capital.
Estimates that appear in the public vary considerably: from those that, based on a simple proportional calculation based on the number of inhabitants, speak of slightly more than 700 facilities, to the claims of councilors, activists and certain organizations that there are more than 1.400 betting shops in the capital.
Mila Popović, the president of the Belgrade committee of the Freedom and Justice Party, stated in mid-2024 that there are 1.440 betting shops in Belgrade, and that many of them are in close proximity to schools, which is against the law.
"There are five betting shops in a row on the Green Ring, although the law stipulates that they must be at a distance of at least 100 m. 694 days ago, we submitted a list of those betting shops in Belgrade that we, together with the citizens, found to be in violation of the law, and the Minister of Finance and newly minted Deputy Prime Minister Siniša Mali did not deign to send an inspection. The criminal complaint due to the obvious negligent work of the Director of the Gaming Authority, Zoran Gašić, which we submitted, it was rejected in just a few days," Popović said at the time.
On the Reddit social network, one of the participants of the discussion tried to list the bookmakers by Belgrade municipalities, relying on publicly visible locations and available data. According to that estimate, there are currently 655 betting shops in Belgrade. The author of the announcement emphasizes that this is an unofficial figure, obtained by summing up by municipalities, without access to institutional registers.
Printscreeen / Reddit / BzatyPost on Reddit
At the same time, several participants in the same discussion warn that the real number is probably higher, because the list did not include bookmakers of lesser-known or local brands, as well as facilities that operate within broader systems of games of chance or under different names.
That is why the figure of 655 itself is described as a conservative estimate, i.e. the lower limit of the actual situation on the ground.
Open discussion due to lack of official data
Although the law stipulates the minimum distance between betting shops and educational institutions, in practice the question of how these rules are interpreted and implemented is often raised.
What citizens see every day is confirmed by unofficial mappings that indicate that bookmakers are especially present in densely populated parts of the city, near public transport stations, shopping centers and schools.
Due to the absence of a transparent and publicly accessible register, the discussion about the number of betting shops in Belgrade remains open.
Until the institutions offer precise and verifiable data, the public space will continue to be filled with assessments, citizens' maps and the feeling that Belgrade is turning into a "casino city" step by step.
