DGOJ ordered to explain compliance exemptions of SELAE and ONCE

Spain’s Ministry of Consumer Affairs wishes to enforce tougher online gambling monitoring after sector penalties increased YoY in 2022.
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ANESAR – Spain’s trade body representing gambling and arcade venues has demanded the DGOJ to explain why state-owned lottery operators are exempt from restrictions and compliance demands applied to land-based venues.

The trade body has submitted a complaint against the DGOJ to Spanish authorities, in which it demands that Spain’s gambling regulator explain why it has granted ‘compliance exemptions’ to state-owned lottery operators SELAE and ONCE.

Accompanying the complaint, ANESAR President José Vall, underlined the costs undertaken by Spanish gambling venues to comply with new safer gambling measures.

Vall cited that gambling venues for casino, arcades, sports betting and bingo were forced to upgrade their technical capacities to ensure new rules on customer ID requirements, age verification and undertaking player self-exclusion checks.

Furthermore, the majority of gambling venues had to undertake internal design changes to promote safer gambling messages and display warnings on gaming screens.

“We demand that all the physical points of sale of the public operators SELAE and ONCE have the same access controls that privately owned gambling establishments already have.” read Vall’s statement

“In such a way that the age must always be verified prior to accessing the game. of the participants and their non-inclusion in the records of interdiction of access to the game”.

ANESAR outlined that during the three-years of Spanish gambling’s reorganisation, it has witnessed no changes applied to SELAE and ONCE, point-of-sales network or advertising practices.

In January, the DGOJ launched a consultation to review “how lottery games are marketed and sold to the public” and whether restrictions should be applied to public vendors of SELAE and ONCE lottery draws.