Spain Scrambles to Protect Adolescents from Gambling with ID Checks

Lawmakers in Spain are scrambling to introduce additional measures designed to protect youths from gambling-related harms. According to a study published in 2022, 21.5% of students aged 14-18 had participated in a form of gambling – whether online or in-person.

Spain Tinkers with ID Rules for Gambling – Yet to Be Implemented

This has galvanized a broad political debate, which has stretched over the past years, and a solution may finally be in sight, with existing measures already supposedly giving some results, as the rate of underage participants in gambling games has fallen, specifically the group of U-18s. A new report will soon outline by how much exactly.

Nevertheless, as reported by SBC Noticias, additional ID checks will be happening, with both online operators and land-based properties obligated to enforce them strictly and ensure that they protect consumers better. The legal gambling age in Spain is 18, meaning that youngsters should not be able to access gambling products in the first place.

The risk is that when people start gambling early, they will exponentially seek to gamble more as they grow older. This has been highlighted in multiple jurisdictions, and especially in places such as the Netherlands where evolving regulatory standards have increasingly demanded from licensees to address these fears better.

The new proposal for ID checks essentially requires slot machines and gambling devices to mandate identification from a person before they can play. The measure is currently at the Joint Commission for the Study of Addiction Problems but has not progressed to a floor vote just yet.

Make Online Games Less Addictive, Urge Lawmakers

Should all go according to plan, the proposal will progress through the legislature and be signed into law. To clarify, Spain’s online operators are already obligated to run identity checks on their customers as part of their broader KYC and AML mandates.

The proposal specifically suggests that there should be a larger change to the online casino sector, which specifically focuses on urging operators to adopt less addictive online games while ensuring that underage individuals do not indeed access any form of gambling over the Internet. The proposal is the work of the Socialist Parliamentary Group.