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Spain – Business Council of Gaming supports advertising restrictions

By - 26 June 2019

The general director of the Industry association The Business Council of Gaming (Cejuego) Alejando Landaluce has argued in favour of “greatly restricting” the advertising of gambling and betting, and requested that the government regulate it more closely.

The head of the association made the comments after the presentation of its Gaming and Society report, compiled by faculty members of the University of La Carlos III Madrid.
Landaluce stressed that we must be “more rigid” with scheduling times in when it comes to gambling and betting. However he argued that gambling advertising should not be banned in line with restrictions in place with tobacco and alcohol. “We should not be compared to them,” he said, after arguing that they are “addictions for substance use and their pathology indexes are different.”
Landaluce said that the organisation has been following proposed regulatory changes to how gambling is advertised very closely and that the organisation has been pushing for better regulation over gambling advertising for years.

Landaluce was taking part in the presentation of the conclusions of the report which was sponsored by Cejuego. The report was headed by José Antonio Gómez Yáñez, Professor of Sociology along with member of the Council of Studies of Policies and Legislation of Gaming Carlos Lalanda Fernández.

According to the research presented by Professor José Antonio Gómez Yáñez, a total of 29 million people played between one or several games in 2018, which represents around 85 per cent of the population living in Spain. Likewise, 19.4 per cent of the population went on occasion during 2018 to a casino, bingo, slot parlour, bet or played in a hospitality machine, which is equivalent to about 6.6 million people. Specifically, in 2018, 2 million people took part in games in casinos; 3 million in bingo halls, 3 million in gambling halls; 1.5 million took part in sports betting, and 1.8 million gambled on slot machines in bars – a figure in slight decline. In terms of online gaming, the report pointed out that almost 1.5 million people played at least once on the Internet during 2018.

In February 2018 Cejuego defended the gaming industry against a raft of new measures, which could restrict gaming advertising. New rules now being developed by the government could see major changes to how and when gambling companies may promote their products with reports emerging that the government could even seek a total ban along the lines of tobacco advertising.
However in a press release at the time Cejuego emphasised that while there was an “important” need for regulation over the advertising of online gambling which puts “clear limits” in place it should “be the same for all players in the industry, whether it be public or private.”

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