Bombay Club, the €75 million luxury casino and dining complex in Tallinn’s Old Town, is closing. The casino shuts its doors on September 30. The accompanying Cantonese fine-dining restaurant, Shang Shi, will follow on November 15. Yolo Group, the crypto gambling company behind the venture, is walking away from land-based gaming in Estonia and concentrating on what its board calls “the business that works.”
A €75 Million Bet on Luxury That Never Paid Off
Bombay Club opened in August 2024 after more than five years of development and a total investment the company put at €75 million. The concept was built around the colonial-era Byculla Club in Bombay: two restored Old Town buildings at Rataskaevu 5-7, 11 gaming tables, private high-roller salons, two Michelin Guide restaurants, a two-Michelin-Key boutique hotel called The Burman, and a 15th-century wine cellar. The venue operated fully cashless through Yolo Wallet. It was the most ambitious casino project Estonia had seen.
The financial reality never matched the ambition. Bombay Group posted a €19 million annual loss with liabilities approaching €150 million. The problem, as reported by Äripäev, was structural: a high-overhead luxury venue dependent on guests spending at a level that never materialized.
In November 2025, the group cut more than 100 jobs as part of what Yolo Group described as a profitability push. By March 2026, more than half of the remaining 164 staff were let go, and daily table game operations were suspended, replaced by gaming by appointment only. The end was visible then. September 30 makes it official.
Yolo Group board member Maarja Pärt framed the closure plainly: the company is stepping back from physical, land-based gambling in Estonia and focusing on what generates returns. The Burman hotel, which holds two Michelin Keys, will continue operating. The Bombay building itself will remain available for private, pre-arranged events. Group CEO Dajana Tiitsaar confirmed that all affected workers will receive redundancy packages under standard restructuring procedures.
What Chesterfield Was, and Why It Mattered
Before Bombay Club, the same ownership group ran Chesterfield Poker Club at Viru väljak 2, on the edge of the Old Town. Chesterfield operated for less than two years as a working poker room and testing ground, hosting the Coolbet Open in April 2025 and the Chesterfield 500, a €50,000 guaranteed event, in July 2025. It also ran a Bad Beat Jackpot that climbed above €100,000 before the room closed. When Chesterfield shut permanently on November 21, 2025, the Bad Beat Jackpot and all ongoing operations transferred to Bombay Club. Its domain now redirects to a Bombay Club closure announcement that explains where it ended up.
For the poker community in Tallinn, Chesterfield was the more accessible of the two venues: a proper card room with a live schedule and regular players, rather than a luxury showpiece priced for whales. Its closure folded that community into Bombay Club, which then suspended regular operations within months. As a result, Tallinn’s live poker scene has lost both venues within a year.
Who Is Yolo Group?
Australian entrepreneur Tim Heath founded Yolo Group in Tallinn in 2014 as Coingaming Group. It rebranded to Yolo Group in 2021. The core business is online crypto gambling, operating Bitcasino.io and Sportsbet.io, alongside B2B payment and platform services, Yolo Investments, and a Milan-listed digital insurance subsidiary. In September 2025, Yolo Group shed 280 employees as part of a wider consolidation under a single regulated brand, Yolo.com, while pursuing UAE licensing.
Bombay Club was always something of a side project for Yolo. A prestige venture and a proof of concept for Yolo Wallet and MiCA-compliant crypto payments in a regulated physical environment. Yolo Investments holds a minority stake in Bombay Group. The casino integrated crypto payments in a way no other Tallinn venue did. As a business, it burned through capital that Yolo’s online operations could not indefinitely absorb. The decision to exit is consistent with where the company is heading: consolidating online, not expanding offline.
Why It Matters to Poker
I was a guest at Bombay Club many times, and the venue was genuinely impressive: the space, the service, the tables. It was built to be the most luxurious poker room in the Baltics, and it delivered on those metrics. What made it work as a venue was that it did not feel exclusionary. The high-end casino and the everyday poker player occupied the same room, and it merged in a way that is harder to pull off than it sounds. The economics just never followed the quality of the experience. I got to end on a high note personally, taking down one of the final tournaments the room ever hosted, a €35 PLO daily event meant for the local masses.
The closure leaves a gap in the high-end, luxury poker market, but there are some potential answers. The situation is far from dim for everyday poker players, as OlyBet Poker and Olympic Park Casino have been supporting the Baltic, Scandinavian, and international poker community for years, running a wide variety of events and festivals. The 2026 Kings of Tallinn Autumn Edition is next, running October 9-18 at Olympic Park Casino.
The Bombay Club concept occupied a different tier entirely, and the question is what will fill the top of the market. But Tallinn’s poker scene has a foundation that predates Bombay Club and will remain long after.
Article originally produced at poker.pro.
