Ban on advertising, sponsorship and promotional communications for gambling: The Communications Regulator list of concerns to the Government

On 24 July 2019, the national Communications Authority (‘AGCOM’) has released a Notice to the Government on the Dignity Decree which introduced in 2018 a blanket ban on advertising and sponsorship for gambling in Italy.
This Notice starts by AGCOM listing the relevant European and national laws and regulations on gambling advertising, putting into context the blanket ban introduction with the Dignity Decree and the subsequent guidelines the Authority adopted in order to implement the ban.
AGCOM then reports in detail the public consultation it launched and the major critical issues highlighted through the contributions.
Based on the above, AGCOM urges the Government to start an overall gambling reform, calling the attention particularly to:

  • ensure the knowledge and awareness of legal gambling;
  • distinguish between games of chance, more subject to compulsiveness and are less controllable, and those games in which the skill element is relevant and provide subsequently different rules for their commercial communications.;
  • adopt a multilevel strategy in order to combat effectively illegal gambling. It includes not a blanket ban but a project in which, on one side, the content of the commercial communications can address the players to legal and responsible gambling and, on the other side, provides the introduction of identification and limitation of loss mechanisms in all the gambling platforms, including the gambling machines”;
  • promote responsible gambling campaigns to contrast gambling addiction and allow the financing of medical, therapeutic supports by gambling operators;
  • provide different rules in order to avoid discriminations between the broadcasting platforms;
  • provide ad hoc rules for offline gambling machines since it is the gambling sector in which the collection is greater and the probability to incur in pathological gambling illness is more frequent;
  • confirm and clarify the exact limits of the competence of AGCOM.

To be noted, the overall gambling reform was announced by the same Dignity Decree introducing the blanket ban within February of this year but wasn’t even started. With the new Government in place, hopefully the awaited reform will be carried out taking also into consideration the crucial matters of concern raised by the blanket ban application that this Notice discloses.

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