Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling

INFORMATION NOTE ON THE CHANGES MADE TO THE CODE OF CONDUCT ON GAMBLING PUBLICITY

On 12 March 2013, acting within the scope of its actions ― one of which is to provide any ideas it may consider appropriate to improve and review the code ― the Joint Monitoring Committee on the code of conduct on gambling advertising approved the following changes to the code (underlined and in italics):

• Section 4.2 added to ethical rule 4
  • 4.- Principle of truth
  • 4.1.- Advertising must be truthful. Therefore, it cannot mislead its audience, nor can it omit or hide important data if such omission is liable to mislead its audience.
  • 4.2.- If the gambling activity is publicised by an advertiser other than the operator, the former must inform clearly of this matter and provide the identity of the licensed operator running the gambling activity.

•  The composition of the Joint Monitoring Committee is changed
  • 3.- Joint Monitoring Committee
  • 3.1.- A Joint Committee is created to monitor this code, to be composed of the Director General for Gambling Regulation until the National Gambling Committee is constituted or, in this case, by its president, who will act as president of the Committee; a representative of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce (or the Spanish Audiovisual Media Council); a representative of the Ministry of Finance and Public Administrations; five representatives of the gambling operator sector; two representative of all other industries subscribed to the code (television service providers, radio service providers, information society service providers and newspaper publishers); and a non-voting representative of Autocontrol who will act as secretary of the Committee.

• Section 2.3.6 added to implementation rule 2
  • 2.- Code compliance control
  • 2.3.- Prior consultation
  • 2.3.6. If the request for prior consultation ― or copy advice ― comes from a code-adhered medium, Autocontrol's technical department will send the report to all code-adhered media unless the requesting medium expressly requests Autocontrol to maintain copy advice confidentiality. This will be done on an exceptional basis and due to the special and internal nature of the action.
    There will be no reference to the requesting medium in the prior advice report. In the same way, AUTOCONTROL will keep the DGOJ and SETSI informed on the number of reports issued, provide copies of these and enable them to access documentary sources so they may perform their duties.

All companies adhered to the code of conduct were notified on 19 March of the abovementioned changes, which took effect on 20 May, in accordance with Section 5.3 (revised code) of the code implementation rules.

None of the companies adhered to the code of conduct have formally announced their rejection of the abovementioned changes nor their resulting disengagement from the code, as set out in Section 5.3 of the code of conduct.

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