Finally, the Royal Decree on Commercial Communications,which final text ECIJA analyzes below, has been approved and published in the Official Gazette (BOE)
1.Sponsorship onpremises, sports teams or competitions, t-shirts or sports equipmentis prohibited.Sponsorship is possible outside the frame of the prohibitions.The existing sponsorship agreements can be in force until 31 August 2020
2.Anykind of promotion for the acquisition of new customersis forbidden, including the “welcome bonus”.
3.Promotion targeted at existing customers is allowed (loyalty bonus) provided that the following tworequirements are met:(i) theclient has a 30 days old opened account,and(ii) hasbeen verified by documentary evidence
4.Free gamescan only be offered to registered clients
5.The use of famous persons, whetherreal or factionary,is prohibited.However, for the existing publicity contractsin this regard, these comercialcommunications will be possible until the 1 April 2021.
6.The broadcasting of commercial communications through audiovisual media and during live sport events is limited to 1a.m. to 5a.m.Likewise, commercial communications of any kind, broadcasted or posted, which are captured by an audiovisual broadcast shall be subject to the same time restriction.
7.The commercial communications through face-to-facemeans must comply not only with the Advertising Royal Decree and the national regulations, but also with the regulations regardinggamingadvertisingimposed by each Autonomous Region. Likewise communications made for a certain sports sponsorship within sports facilities or published in magazines, newspapers or similar media specialized on gambling on a national level, will not be obliged to comply with the regional regulations on advertising, but only the national ones.
8.Operators are prohibited from using trademarks or trade names which they do not own. It is worth mentioning that operators have a transition period of 6monthsfrom the entry into force of the Advertising Royal Decree to comply with this obligation.
9.Commercial communications made through digital services, will be permitted when:a.Ads included on websites with “.es” domain from authorized operators and on their mobile applications.b.Ads on webpages or apps which main activity is the offer of products and informationrelating togamblingprovided that they have mechanisms to prevent access by minors and to broadcast messages about safe play; c.Ads on webpages or apps which main activity is to offer information on sports or horse racingusing a specific section.d.Those resulting from search results.If those are from SEMactions, the key words used must be directly related to gambling; e.Those sent by e-mail or other equivalent means; f.Those broadcastedas audiovisualcommercial communications on video exchange platforms. With the following restrictions: (i) they must have mechanisms to prevent commercial communications being addressed tominors (ii) they must have mechanisms for hiding or blocking pop-up ads from their users; (iii) they must have mechanisms for controlling time slots and; g.Those broadcastedas audiovisual commercial communications on social networks. With the following restrictions: (i) they must have mechanisms to prevent commercial communications being addressed to minors; (ii) they must have mechanisms to hide or block pop-up advertisements from their users; (iii) they must have mechanisms to segment the target audienceand be addressed only to persons who follow the channel of an operator,persons who have shown and interest or persons registered with an operator.
11.TheRoyal Decree enters in force on the following day from its publication, 5 November, however, there are many exceptionsin this regard and many provisions which enter into force later.
It is undoubtedly an excessively restrictive framework and ECIJA hopes that its applicationand interpretation by the DGOJ will be a little more flexible in doubtful cases.
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