Spain’s gambling regulator has prohibited its sports betting licensees from taking wagers on matches involving underage athletes.
On Monday, Spain’s Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ) regulatory body announced that its sports betting licensees “will not be able to include in their program of events those that are played exclusively or predominantly by minors.”
The DGOJ said the change was made for several reasons, all of them “based on the best interests of the minor.” For one thing, the DGOJ wants to establish a “clear separation” between kids and the betting industry in order to “avoid the trivialization” of the potential risks of gambling.
Secondly, the DGOJ wants to ensure the “healthy participation” of kids in sport without leaving them vulnerable to “the economic interests of third parties” who might attempt to sway kids to miss a penalty kick or double-fault on match point in order to ensure a winning result for a bettor.
Spain has taken a growing interest in match integrity of late, including last week’s announcement of the creation of a commission tasked with developing plans to “detect, prevent and combat illegal actions in the field of sports competitions and fraud in betting.”
Spain is far from alone in cracking down on operators who offer betting markets on underage sport, although some regulators are proving more stringent than others. Sweden recently penalized eight of its betting licensees for taking wagers on football matches involving players under 19 years of age, although some of the penalized companies have complained that Sweden’s rules are too vague.
In other Spanish gaming news, the country’s acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez gave a speech Monday urging legislators to support his bid to form a majority government following April’s general election. Sánchez’s Socialist party needs the support of the far-left Podemos party to achieve majority control of Congress.
As part of his inaugural speech, Sánchez briefly addressed the gaming industry, saying that “society demands that we regulate with bravery [gambling] that has spread out of control on the streets of our country and in particular the districts with less income.” Sánchez added that the government “must act with rigor to prevent [problem gambling] and to foment definitively a healthy alternate leisure.”
