Jdigital calls for evaluation of current regulations before reforming the gambling law
The reform of the Spanish gambling law will not be approved in this legislature, and Jdigital states this unequivocally. The association believes that, with the parliamentary period in its final stretch, there is no room for a change of such magnitude to complete its journey and become law. Their proposal is to use the remaining months for preliminary work.
The open letter they published comes after the Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ) initiated the process that should culminate in a preliminary draft to amend Law 13/2011. For the entity, what is at stake is not a mere tweaking of articles but the framework that will govern the sector for the next decade.
Their first request is methodological. Before defining what to change, they argue, what has already been done should be measured. The association highlights the regulatory intensity of the last two legislatures, with new regulations, more control and prevention instruments, and a greater burden of obligations on companies, and calls for an analysis to determine what worked, what effect each decision had on players, on companies, on how much demand remained within the legal circuit, and on the market in general.
The diagnosis starts with a temporal comparison. The law has been the basis of a regulated and supervised market for fifteen years, and during that time, technology, consumption habits, the sector itself, and the surrounding regulation have changed.
The illegal market occupies a central place in their interpretation. Jdigital argues that unlicensed offerings are not only a problem of unfair competition for those operating within the system but also push a portion of players outside the safeguards that Spanish law requires to be offered. Among the challenges for the coming years, they also identify technological evolution, changing habits, the emergence of other digital leisure formats, and the need to update supervision tools.
To organize its contribution, it created three working groups with its associates. One will examine how the regulated market functions and how competitive it is, another will focus on player protection and responsible gambling, and the third on the advertising, commercial, and digital ecosystem in which the sector operates. Each team will start with a situational diagnosis, identify sector challenges, and formulate concrete proposals. The conclusions will be integrated into a single document that the association expects to present in early 2027, intended as input for the reform promoted by the next Government.
It also called for an open discussion table. Jdigital demanded dialogue that includes public and private companies, sector chambers, organizations working on the prevention and treatment of gambling problems, and specialists.
Jdigital is the Spanish digital gambling association and was the first entity that the DGOJ received in its round of meetings on July 21st, a tour that later continued with ANESAR, FEMARA, FAMACASMAN, ACEO, LaLiga, and SELAE itself. The prior public consultation, opened in May, gathered more than 50 contributions that the regulator is still processing.
Tags: Jdigital, reform of Law 13/2011, Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling, illegal gambling market