EGBA's members achieve important advances in responsible advertising

 The first independent monitoring was conducted by the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA) and finds that the EGBA code provides a solid foundation for responsible advertising, due to its comprehensive and detailed content.

We must remember that the EGBA is made up of bet365, Betsson Group, Entain, Flutter, Kindred Group and William Hill, who together have promoted the pan-European code of responsible advertising for online gambling established by EGBA in 2020 and which covers advertising content, social networks, protection of minors and responsible gaming messages.


In this line, EGBA points out that monitoring is an integral part of the code and EGBA members will have their compliance periodically monitored by an independent third party to improve the code's effectiveness and ensure it is kept up to date.

On this occasion, EGBA commissioned EASA to monitor the code during the Euro 2020 football tournament in 2021. EASA were assisted by Nielsen, a major advertising analytics company, who collected 1240 adverts from EGBA members, in four countries (Greece, Romania, Ireland, and Sweden). EASA then assessed the collected adverts, which included TV ads, online pre-rolls, static and animated online banners, along with the social media accounts of EGBA members.

In their conclusions, shared with EGBA in June 2022, EASA gave positive feedback about the code, stating that it provides a solid basis for responsible advertising, due to its comprehensive and detailed content, and EGBA members already correctly apply most of its measures in their advertising, particularly on content moderation.

EASA suggested that the code could be strengthened further, particularly on the clarity of the responsible gambling message in the warnings (both in terms of legibility and speed), the explicit mention of legal age requirements for online gambling, the provision of a forward advice notice, and age-gating mechanisms on social media profiles.

As a next step, EGBA members will discuss how to use and implement the feedback from EASA to further strengthen the overall effectiveness of the code.

Considering the results obtained, Maarten Haijer, EGBA General Secretary, expressed the satisfaction of the members after the results and said: "We thank EASA for their critical but constructive approach. Advertising is an essential tool to inform the public of which gambling operators are licensed and regulated – and it can be done responsibly. We encourage other operators to sign up to the code and join our efforts to raise responsible advertising standards. The industry must get serious about responsible and measured advertising, especially with the World Cup coming up later this year, otherwise the pressure of advertising restrictions will continue to pile on.”