Spain to centralise gambling self-exclusion

The multi-regulatory network in Spain is being merged, but only for the arrangement of self-exclusion gambling schemes.

Spain’s 17 autonomous communities each have their own gambling regulations and while many aspects of them are common the producers of equipment for Spain have to have machines homologated separately for each one.

Now, however, one aspect of the sector in Spain is to be brought under one control. They communities have agreed to integrate their self-exclusion schemes to better co-ordinate player protection.

The 17 regions, plus the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, met at the national Gambling Policy Council and made the agreement – by a majority with Catalonia voting against and two communities, Basque and Valencia, abstaining.

There is already a centrally-held self-exclusion database and now they will work together to develop a technical and regulatory framework to link all of the self-exclusion programmes together within the next four months.

In 2020’s first quarter, revenue across all sectors of gambling in Spain rose by 12.5 per cent to €218m.