Spanish lottery vendors urge Senate to regulate digital sales
Jon Urkiola, president of the lottery retailers' association Defensa Digital (Dedit), has conveyed to the Senate's Social Rights, Consumer Affairs, and Agenda 2030 Committee the extreme concern of a group that feels it is in a critical situation. The appearance served to denounce a regulatory blockade that prevents Spain's more than 10,600 official points of sale from adapting safely to current technological reality. With a structure that supports 18,000 direct jobs and mobilizes economic activity exceeding 10 billion euros annually, the sector demands that digitalization cease to be a barrier and become the necessary survival tool for thousands of small businesses, especially those located in rural areas.
The profitability crisis is one of the most alarming points of the diagnosis presented to the upper house. Urkiola recalled that the price of lottery tickets has remained frozen since 2002, while business costs and inflation have climbed 60 percent in the same period. This economic strangulation has led to a loss of profitability for administrations exceeding 60 percent in the last two decades, a scenario that seriously endangers the continuity of thousands of establishments that fulfill a fundamental social and economic function in their communities.
The debate on internet sales is the central axis of the institutional conflict with Loterías y Apuestas del Estado (SELAE). Currently, online sales generate about 1.5 billion euros annually, representing approximately 10 percent of the total business and accounting for up to 30 percent of the turnover of many small administrations. There is a well-founded fear among lottery retailers that SELAE will unilaterally impose a concentration of all digital activity through its own website, which would turn points of sale into entirely dependent entities instead of allowing them to compete on equal terms.
To reverse this trend, Dedit, along with other associations, has led the creation of a Table for the Profitability and Digitalization of Online Lottery. From this platform, a report with proposals has been promoted to establish a regulatory framework based on technological neutrality and consumer protection. Among the specific requests to the Government are the urgent update of prices and commissions, as well as the recognition of online sales as a natural extension of the physical point of sale. Furthermore, the sector urges that the Directorate General for Gambling Regulation be assigned the competence to supervise digital activity, thus preventing SELAE from acting simultaneously as judge and party in a market that needs clear rules and legal certainty to prosper.
Tags: Spain, lottery retailers Spain, Spanish lotteries, online lotteries Spain