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Szerencsejáték Zrt, Hungary’s state-owned gambling and betting operator, has replaced its board and installed a new chairman, the first leadership overhaul of the company under Péter Magyar’s TISZA government.
Finance and Economy Minister András Kármán announced the appointment of Marcell Olajos as chairman on Tuesday. Effective 15 July, board members Krisztina Rédey, Gábor Bordás, Szabolcs Ágostházy and Zsófia Illés-Puka were removed, while Marianna Gabriella Poltné Palásthy resigned.
The move follows the dismissal in late June of Zoltán Guller, the former chairman and a senior tourism official under Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz administration. Guller had overseen one of Hungary’s most important state enterprises, which holds a monopoly over the national lottery and a dominant position in retail sports betting.
Kármán frames the overhaul as anti-cronyism
Kármán said the changes deliver on TISZA’s pledge to strip political influence and cronyism from state enterprises and restore transparency, accountability and professional governance. Announcing the reshuffle, he said:
Political influence and unauthorised advantage are a thing of the past.
The minister pledged “corruption-free and transparent management” across Hungary’s public enterprises. The reshuffle lands during a stretch of heightened regulatory scrutiny and enforcement across gambling markets, with governance and transparency high on the agenda for operators and regulators alike.
Not everyone accepted that framing. Poltné Palásthy, wife of former Prosecutor General Péter Polt, criticised the removals in comments to Hungarian media.
Poltné Palásthy described the board’s removal as a “politically motivated purge” and accused TISZA of the same practices it had attributed to Fidesz.
Part of a wider state-enterprise review
The changes form part of a review of state-owned organisations launched after TISZA’s election victory on 12 April. The programme is central to Magyar’s effort to revive an economy that has ranked at the bottom of EU member states for the past three years.
The review will examine Szerencsejáték Zrt’s governance, its monopoly privileges and the distribution of gambling revenues under the previous administration. Particular attention will fall on how state gambling profits were allocated through sponsorships and public funding during the Fidesz era, with critics arguing that billions of forints in grants routed through the operator’s subsidiaries disproportionately benefited Fidesz-aligned organisations. The audit is the first serious review of the operator’s finances in more than a decade. Scrutiny of governance at state-linked gambling bodies has surfaced elsewhere, including an investigation into the Curaçao Gaming Authority by the public prosecution service.
Reform likely to target governance, not the monopoly
The outcome could shape the direction of Hungary’s gambling market. The country opened its online sports betting market to European Economic Area operators in 2023, though retail betting and the national lottery stayed under Szerencsejáték Zrt’s control. Analysts expect the government to revisit concessions inherited from the Orbán administration while weighing reforms to improve transparency and competition.
Any change is likely to stop short of dismantling the state’s position. Szerencsejáték Zrt generates more than €3bn in annual revenue and contributes around €447m in taxes and regulatory payments, so reforms are expected to focus on governance rather than the operator’s dominant role. Gambling revenue has become a fiscal pressure point across Europe, where tax changes have already reshaped operator economics in other markets.
It remains unclear whether Magyar or Kármán will reopen the Gambling Act of 1991. The Orbán administration ran a liberalisation process from 2022 to 2023 aimed at bringing competition into the sports betting market, but privileges retained by Szerencsejáték Zrt left a licensing tender with no takers. No European Economic Area operator applied to enter under the new regime, leaving the state operator effectively unchallenged in the market it was meant to open.
Whether the review produces a genuine market opening or simply new management atop the same monopoly will depend on what the audit finds, and on whether the leadership under Olajos changes how the operator distributes its revenues.
Source: Hungarian Government
