Bulgaria has banned the opening of casinos in towns with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants and completely banned gambling advertising in all types of media, with most parliament lawmakers voting in the new bill’s favour.
The bill, which was introduced less than a week ago, was pushed through to be voted on during the last day of parliament.
Proposed by GERB (EPP) and DPS (Renew Europe), the bill received an impressive 198 votes in favour, without a single vote against or abstention in Bulgaria’s 240-seat parliament.
Gambling has been at the centre of the biggest corruption scandal, which hit the EU’s poorest country in the last five years.
While gambling advertising became particularly visible in 2015, when the country’s biggest gambling boss, Vasil Bozhkov, and his private lotteries became the largest advertisers in Bulgarian media, parliament ultimately shut down his business in 2020, after which the US sanctioned Bozhkov for corruption.
The closure of Bozhkov’s gambling business in 2020 opened up a niche for several smaller online gambling operators, which in three years have become the largest source of revenue for Bulgarian media.
According to official data for 2023, gambling companies spent €85 million on media advertising, with the largest share going to Bulgarian companies Efbet and Winbet and Greek company Betano.
Over the past three years, hundreds of new casinos and gambling halls have been built in Bulgaria’s major cities. In 2023, aggressive advertising by gambling sites completely overtook Bulgarian television during the World Cup in Qatar.
Media independence?
The ban on gambling advertising did not go unnoticed by national TV stations and several news websites, which said on Monday that they were heavily dependent on advertising from betting websites.
The new law could work against the independence of the media, they warned.
“A ban on advertising in the media is a ban on the provision of a media service within the meaning of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive”, argued the Association of Bulgarian Broadcasters (ABRO), adding that the financial sustainability of the media, including through gambling advertising, is important for quality journalism.
The gambling sector is “in favour” of restricting gambling advertising, said Stilyan Shishkov, founder of Bulgaria’s largest sports news website Sportal.bg and executive director of the Bulgarian Gambling Association, warning that it could lead to the growth of the grey sector.
“As the experience of other European markets shows, restricting advertising leads to an increase in the activity of unlicensed sites, which reduces the state’s ability to collect taxes and fees from gambling activities and to provide protection for these users,” Shishkov said.
Commercial broadcasters claim they will be deprived of huge annual revenues, making it difficult to broadcast major sporting events. The business weekly Capital questions whether the reduction in the revenues of the largest private TV channels is aimed at controlling them by political actors.
Once the law is passed, gambling companies will only be allowed to advertise outdoors on billboards at least 300 metres from schools, kindergartens, universities, gambling halls, and sports facilities and equipment, except for those intended for children.
Gambling advertising in the media will only be allowed for the state lottery “Bulgarian Sports Totalisator”, which must use its profits to finance Bulgarian sports.
At the same time, similar restrictions were imposed on the Romanian gambling market, in which some Bulgarian companies have shown serious interest. Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu warned gambling companies on Tuesday that their licences would be revoked if they failed to comply with a law banning slot machines in smaller towns in a bid to tackle the country’s alarming levels of gambling addiction.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)