BetBlocker allocates donation received at ICE to research
The EUR 20,000 that BetBlocker International received from ICE Barcelona 2026 will not go towards operating expenses. The organization decided to invest it in research on how to design functionalities that offer higher levels of protection to those seeking to add extra layers of safeguarding against gambling.
Pedro Romero, Director of Safe Gaming Alliances for the entity, explained the reasoning behind this decision. What interests them is that any new development should be technically sound but also built on evidence, real experiences, and the opinions of specialists, rather than being launched based solely on a good product intuition. The expected outcome is concrete: better tools for people exposed to the harms of gambling, developed with a methodical approach.
The amount was awarded alongside three other charities in the same field, all receiving the same sum, equivalent to USD 23,000. The money came from contributions from eleven industry brands, including Acordjoc, Betsson Group, BGaming, Cirsa, Flutter, Grupo Orenes, Merkur, Merkur Dosniha, Novomatic, Novomatic Spain, and Zitro, which pushed the historical cumulative total of these donations to EUR 462,500.
The setting where these awards are presented has its own history. The Sustainable Gambling Zone debuted in 2018 under a different name, Consumer Protection Zone, and over the years has come to occupy a central place in the ICE Barcelona experience. For Romero, this visible location is not a mere detail of the floor plan: he argues that it is probably the most influential event in the sector, and seeing player protection at the center of the venue forces the industry to demand more of itself.
His interpretation is that sustainability, harm reduction, and player care must be part of the main conversation, not relegated to a side room. He credits the exhibition with bringing together charities, researchers, operators, and regulators in the same space, an intersection from which real progress can emerge.
The assessment, however, is not complacent. Romero believes that both the zone and the ICE Research Institute are moving in the right direction, but he calls for more companies to get involved in a sustained manner and, above all, to use the knowledge and tools produced by these initiatives to truly change how they protect their users.
BetBlocker International is a charity that freely distributes self-exclusion software capable of blocking access to thousands of gambling sites on all of a user's devices, without requiring personal data to function. During 2025, it supported over 300,000 active users in various countries.
Tags: BetBlocker International, Sustainable Gambling Zone, ICE Barcelona 2026, Gambling Harm Minimization