Spain’s DGOJ Proposes Changes to Advertising for Lotteries

Spain’s Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ) published this week a draft resolution seeking to implement changes to the way lottery operators are marketed to consumers.

Affecting Lotteries and Their Vendors

The draft resolution aimed at lottery operators and any third party involved in the marketing of lottery products seeks to extend the advertising restrictions Spain imposed on gambling operators at the end of 2020 to lottery operators.

Simultaneously with the draft resolution publication, the DGOJ opened up a consultation period, allowing stakeholders and other interested parties to express their opinion on the proposed changes until March 1, 2023.

According to the proposed changes, lottery operators will have to implement age verification through national databases and let minors or other individuals who are prohibited from participating know that they are not allowed to buy lottery tickets.

Lotteries will also have to implement on their websites an official seal that proves that the site is authentic, while their third-party marketing partners will have to follow the same rules and make sure lottery product sales via their channels are transparent.

Spain’s national lotteries, ONCE, the lottery for the disabled, and SELAE, the lottery for charity purposes, are allowed by the law to partner with third parties in relation to the marketing and sales of their products. Public vendors can be cafes, restaurants, tobacco shops, retail shops, and others.

The draft regulation also extends the provisions of Spain’s Law on Gaming Regulation from May 2011 and the Royal Decree from November 2020 which implemented a series of advertising restrictions for gambling operators, including a watershed ban on TV and radio advertising, as well as a ban on bonuses, to include lottery operators and their public vendor partners.

Need for Consumer Protection

The proposal was made due to DGOJ’s observations that the number of websites and online applications selling lottery tickets and ONCE and SELAE games has increased dramatically, thereby increasing the need to ensure these online vendors offer appropriate customer protection and guarantees to the public.

In November, the DGOJ informed the public that during the first half of the year, its enforcement actions resulted in financial sanctions imposed on 53 online gambling operators totaling €84.3 million, signaling a dramatic increase to the numbers from the year before when only 21 operators had been sanctioned.

While several of the operators were also stripped of their licenses, the majority of licensees were fined for breaches of the gambling advertising restrictions introduced to the country’s gambling law via the Royal Decree of 2020.