SBC News

A Liberal Democrat peer has proposed changes to the Football Governance Bill targeting betting sponsorship in football, showing that the debate around the topic is far from over despite the regulatory developments of the past few years.

In a House of Lords debate on the bill this week, Lord Dominic Hubbard, 6th Baron Addington, who is also Vice President of the UK Sports Association, proposed four amendments to the legislation relating to betting sponsorships in football.

Lord Dominic Hubbard, 6th Baron Addington – Source: UK Parliament
“Certain sports such as horseracing tend to be dependent on gambling, but we have something of a surfeit of gambling advertising on our televisions: it is everywhere,” he said.

“In these amendments, I am suggesting that football might be one place we could do without it. The revenue might be very useful to the clubs involved, but we have already heard about the huge reach of football as a subject, and the fact that there is a huge demand for it. Can ..

The application of cross-operator checks and protections mandated by Germany’s Fourth Interstate Treaty on Gambling (GlüNeuRStV) has come under scrutiny.

The liabilities of the GlüNeuRStV regime were detailed by the journal Investigate Europe, which on 6 March published an article titled: “Legal, illegal, doesn’t it matter?”

The article exposes that “in Germany, state governments have circumvented the rules, allowing gambling companies free rein in their illegal business while the criminals remain unmolested.”

An investigative team has accused German federal states of allowing online operators to bypass strict financial cross-operator checks to allow customers to gamble above the deposit threshold of €1,000.

The laws of the GlüNeuRStV regime, imposed since 1 July 2021, obligate licensed operators to apply a cross-operator €1,000 deposit limit on customer accounts.

GlüNeuRStV rules allow operators to increase the deposit threshold to a higher limit of €10,000, depending on a cross-..

The government of Mexico has confirmed the appointment of Olivia Salomón Vibaldo as the new Director General of Lotería Nacional (Lotenal).

The appointment carries the support of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, for whom Vibaldo served as Business Liaison Secretary during Sheinbaum’s landslide election victory in 2024, when she became Mexico’s first-ever female President.

A figurehead in Mexican business, Vibaldo is the former founder of the real estate investment firm SyA Promotores, helping to build commercial properties and public venues in the municipality of Puebla.

In 2019, Vibaldo entered Mexican politics, having been elected as Secretary of Economy for the State of Puebla.

Her tenure is credited with raising foreign investment in Puebla and implementing a new ‘Energy Actions’ programme, recognised for reviving Puebla’s GDP growth from 0.9% in 2019 to 3.2%.

At a national level, Vibaldo has promoted the equality and social justice campaigns of “Mujer es Poder” and ..

Following weeks of deliberations, the National Assembly of Armenia has approved a package of legislative amendments to apply a new tax code on gambling activities.

Initiated from 1 July 2025, the new tax code will apply a 10% turnover tax on the gambling activities of casinos, online games, sports betting, lotteries and totalizers.

A further tax burden will be applied from 1 April 2025, as the licence fees of Armenian-licensed online gambling and sports betting businesses will double, with a commitment to “increase fees annually” until the government establishes a new authority to regulate Armenia’s gambling sector.

The radical overhaul of Armenia’s tax code on gambling was designed by MP Hayk Sargsyan of the Civil Contract Party, with a view to raising AMD 13bn (circa €32m) in state funds.

Hayk Sargsyan: Civil Contract
Long journey to tax settlements
In previous deliberations, the Ministry of Finance had opposed the tax increases, arguing that they could destabilise the industry a..

The government of the Republic of Slovakia has been urged to recognise the acceleration of online gambling (particularly online casinos) outpacing land-based gambling segments.

Martin Bohoš: ÚRHH
The warning came from Martin Bohoš, Director General of ÚRHH, Slovakia’s Office for the Regulation of Gambling, who filed the monitoring report for 2024 activities to the Vláda.

The report detailed that in 2024, Slovakian gambling grossed a total of €24.2bn, up 14% on the 2023 figure of €21.4bn.

ÚRHH observed that total winnings paid out amounted to €22.8bn, as net gambling losses stood at €1.45bn, up €130m (+9%) on 2023 losses of €1.32bn.

Gambling taxes contributed €347m to Slovakia’s state budget, reflecting a second consecutive year of tax growth of €46m (2022: €251m and 2023: €301m).

Without a doubt, ÚRHH identified the driver for market growth as online casinos, which generated total bets of €12.8bn and winnings of €11.7bn. Online casinos contributed to net losses of €480m.

Online c..

ADM, Italy’s Customs and Monopolies Agency, has published its “Activity and Organisation Plan 2025 to 2027 (PIAO),” outlining its management and control objectives for key industries, including Italy’s gambling sector.

The plan is attached to Italy’s Budget 2025 and defines the agency’s specific goals and investment requirements for resources, operating systems, and technology upgrades.

As part of its regulatory functions, the agency oversees the governance and conduct of Italy’s energy, alcohol, tobacco, and gambling (lotteries and public gaming) sectors.

Player protection front and centre
Under the PIAO, ADM will implement a new framework to govern Italian gambling licences, aligned with the structural changes introduced by the “Reorganisation of Gambling Decree” (March 2024) — supporting the government’s mandate to modernise Italy’s gambling laws.

ADM states that these changes will ensure legal transparency for gambling concessions while strengthening its oversight and control o..

Isthmian League team Lewes FC has given its full support to its player Danny Bassett, who is charged with breaking FA betting rules.

Bassett plans to organise an awareness campaign for other players to educate them about the betting regulations at that level of football.

The player has been charged with breaching the FA’s E8 rule, which prohibits all footballers from betting on the sport in any form.

He is hardly the first to find themselves in this situation in recent years – a number of notable players at much larger teams, like Newcastle United, Brentford and Nottingham Forest, have been charged with breaching the rule over the past couple of years.

What is significant though is that unlike these clubs, Lewes FC is notable for being vocally opposed to betting’s visibility in football, and is highlighting the incident as an example of the risks of the gambling-football relationship.

The Sussex club has been a partner of gambling reform advocacy group and charity Gambling With L..

ATG argues that the Swedish government’s target channelisation rates, reflecting the number of consumers being directed to the regulated betting market, are far from being achieved.

In a recent report, the operator of Sweden’s totalizator horse racing betting system estimated that the channelisation rate in Q4 2024 stood at around 69-82% – far below the government target of 90% and raising concerns around player protection and money laundering.

ATG claims that there are 20 unnoticed gaming sites targeting Swedish customers overall. However, key highlights from the report suggest some serious discrepancies across the full business chain behind both the regulated and unregulated market in Sweden.

Of the 20 illegal sites, 17 use the same platform providers as licensed operators while six of the ones with the highest traffic allowed direct deposits and withdrawals via BankID, a digital verification system used by well over 90% of Swedes.

Tough adjustments remain for Sweden
The report s..

In line with growing concerns over offshore betting and gambling advertisements, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

The organisation has linked up with the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS), the All India Gaming Federation (AIGF) as well as the E-Gaming Federation (EGF) to establish a framework to address these challenges through a special monitoring cell.

The cell focuses on screening and reporting offshore betting and gambling advertisements to the concerned ministries.

Manisha Kapoor, CEO and Secretary General at ASCI, commented: “Indian consumers are exposed to numerous ads of offshore betting and gambling companies that have no accountability in India.

“Several Indian celebrities have also been a part of such advertisements. Since gambling ads are prohibited in most parts of the country, their large-scale presence is a breach of the law. ASCI would like to surface such advertising to the regulators f..

Branschföreningen för Onlinespel (BOS), the Sweden Online Gambling Trade Association, has called on the Ministry of Finance to amend loopholes in the Gambling Act 2018.

The trade body believes that Swedish online gambling is currently exposed to a massive influx of unlicensed gambling offers targeting national consumers.

Liabilities are facilitated by the Gambling Act only applying to licences that conduct gambling by offering Swedish language and transactions in Swedish Krona.

The legislation ignores the fact that Swedish consumers can easily choose to play on unlicensed alternatives offering the euro (€) (or others), with no Swedish content – a condition that avoids regulatory scrutiny.

Gustaf Hoffstedt: BOS
As cited by BOS: “The decisive factor is whether the gaming site has text in Swedish or offers deposits and winnings in Swedish currency and that this must be determined by an overall assessment on a case-by-case basis.”

As such, BOS argues that the Gambling Act contains fun..