Legislation
Spain – Regulator imposed fines of €120m on online operators in 2022
By James - 27 April 2023
The head of the Ministry of Consumption Alberto Garzón announced that as many as 20 gaming operators has been sanctioned for “serious or very serious” infractions committed in the second half of 2022. The new fines meant that in 2002 as many as 73 companies were fined with a total of €120 million in penalties.
As reported in El País Garzón said that seven of the operators had incurred very serious infractions, which had led to the closure of their sites, their disqualification for a period of two years, and a penalty of €5m each.
In addition, the General Directorate for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ) also detected that another 13 online operators had committed serious infractions during the period, leading to fines of €560,000. Of these, nine were penalized for failing to comply with the royal decree for gambling advertising, with written warnings or were handed out fines of €10,000.
Four other sites were sanctioned with fines ranging between €125,000 and €160,000 for allowing access to players who were part of Spain’s gambling self exclusion programme.
In the first half of 2022, the Ministry of Consumption had revealed a total of 53 sanctions against gambling operators, as well as the closure of 21 interactive gambling sites for committing very serious infractions, for which it imposed fines of €84.3m. 2022 closed with 73 gambling companies sanctioned for some type of irregularity, of which 28 had been found to have committed very serious infractions.
In total, the sanctions imposed in 2022 reached€ 120m, more than double that recorded in 2021, when the fines reached €58 million imposed on 19 operators. In all fines amounted to a total of almost €180, in the last two years.
