Spain’s gambling regulator, the Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ), under the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030, has launched the procedure to approve a new resolution establishing a mechanism to detect risky gambling behavior among online players.
The system, which will be mandatory for all licensed private operators, is based on machine learning techniques (XGBoost) and will analyze more than 60 behavioral and transactional variables. These include player demographics, deposits and withdrawals, frequency of activity, session duration, betting patterns, stake variations, and time of play.
The project explicitly defines the game segments that fall under the scope of the risk detection system:
Sports, horse racing, and other betting (APU)
Casino games of chance (AZA)
Roulette (RLT)
Poker (POQ)
Blackjack (BLJ)
Bingo (BNG)
Through these segments, the model evaluates behaviors such as live betting, cash-out frequency, stake increases after significant wins, and consecutive gaming days.
Lotteries left out
A striking element of the project is that lotteries and instant lotteries are not mentioned at all, even though they remain the most widespread gambling product among the Spanish population.
This omission confirms that the system’s scope is limited exclusively to the online private gambling market, excluding products operated under state monopoly such as SELAE’s lotteries and those managed by the ONCE.
18+ | Juegoseguro.es – Jugarbien.es