SBC News

The government of France has withdrawn the ‘proposed amendments’ to the 2025 Budget to legislate and launch an online casino market.

The decision was announced on Sunday by Budget Minister Laurent Saint-Martin, who stated that further consultations were needed to avoid the negative impacts and job losses warned by regional stakeholders.

“There was talk that the government would submit an amendment. This is no longer the case. I believe we need to work among ourselves first,” the Minister stated on Radio J this weekend.

“I am very vigilant about this issue. We must not make mistakes. We must ensure that it doesn’t harm certain stakeholders, especially land-based casinos.”

As a result, France will maintain its 2010 gambling laws, upholding a fragmented marketplace that regulates sports betting, horseracing, and poker, but prohibits online casino activities.

The intervention follows Prime Minister Michel Barnier allowing France’s Budget 2025 to include an amendment for online casino ..

BVGroup has named Tracy McGrady as the Safer Gambling Ambassador in Canada for its BetVictor brand.

The seven-time NBA All-Star played for the Toronto Raptors, Orlando Magic, Houston Rockets, New York Knicks, Detroit Pistons, Atlanta Hawks and the San Antonio Spurs, all during his 16-year career.

Brent Almeida, CCO of BVGroup, noted: “We are thrilled to have signed Tracy McGrady to BetVictor to promote Safer Gambling.”

Almeida described the player as the ‘perfect role model’, with an amazing career across 16 seasons in the NBA. He said: “Aligning with him is a perfect fit for the BetVictor brand.”

The Gibraltar-headquartered operator currently has gambling licences in the UK, Republic of Ireland, Ontario and Gibraltar.

It was only last year that BetVictor revealed the new group corporate identity, including a new company name, logo and website, switching to BVGroup to ‘reflect its position’ as a multi-brand gambling operator and B2B technology solutions provider – whilst also ackn..

Spanish gambling has been made aware of an “intrusive amendment” sought by the government to reimpose advertising restrictions on licensed operators.

Revealed by the Spanish online gambling association Jdigital, the PSOE/Sumar government has adopted an “unrelated amendment” to the Decree to Establish a State Agency for Public Health.

The amendment will reintroduce advertising restrictions, limiting gambling advertisements on social media platforms, prohibiting bonus promotions, and banning the use of public figures.

Reviewed by the Supreme Court of Spain, the above restrictions were “partially annulled” in April, as articles of the Royal Decree on Advertising – the Spanish government’s federal mandate to impose restrictions on gambling advertising across Spanish media.

Judges sided with an appeal from Jdigital and the Information Media Association (AMI), who had accused the Ministry of Consumer Affairs of bypassing “federal applications” to include the restrictions as measures of t..

BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register of Australian gambling, will undertake its first statutory review.

As confirmed by Communications Minister Michelle Rowland, the government has appointed Richard Eccles to conduct the review, evaluating BetStop’s progress against its founding objectives.

BetStop came into existence in August 2023 to serve as a national, unified gambling self-exclusion scheme available across all six federal states.

The register is operated by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), who, in 2022, were granted new federal controls on safer gambling duties across Australia.

As agreed by the gambling authorities/boards of the Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory, and Tasmania, all licensed operators must register their player databases with BetStop, regardless of the state in which they are licensed.

The ACMA reports that since its launch in August 2023, over 30,000 Australians have signe..

Jake Pollard
Jake Pollard reports that an amendment introduced over the weekend will kick off the regulatory process that could see the last major western European market regulate its online casino sector.

The French government introduced an amendment over the weekend to regulate online casino and has set in motion the process that could see France become a regulated iCasino market, but the regulatory format that has been outlined has led the country’s land-based casinos to say that it is “tantamount to signing their death warrant”.

The amendment paves the way for the legalisation of the vertical, which stakeholders have been calling for for many years, and, if passed, would see France become the last major western European market to host a legal and licensed online casino sector.

With new Prime Minister Michel Barnier seeking to raise revenues to address the country’s debt levels, which currently stand at 112% of its gross domestic product while its public deficit is at 5.5% of GD..

The government is considering new policies and strategies to reduce gambling harms, including a review of new research on gambling advertising.

Stephanie Peacock, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) responded to questions on the DCMS’s assessment of “the potential impact of gambling companies advertising through sports clubs on problem gambling.”

On sponsorships, Peacock stated that all major UK sports bodies have established individual Codes of Conduct on Gambling Sponsorships, which set minimum standards and duties for gambling partnerships to follow.

The coverage of gambling sponsorships in UK sports will be significantly reduced by the Premier League’s pledge to ban front-of-shirt sponsorship by gambling firms by the end of the 2025/26 season.

Labour trusts ASA codes and controls
With regard to broadcast and media advertising, the government upholds the codes of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) as the independent body responsible for regulating ..

Roumen Spetsov, Director General of Bulgaria’s National Revenue Agency (NRA), has expanded the country’s online gambling blacklist with 52 more operators.

After an exhaustive investigation by the national gambling regulator, its specialised branch – the Electronic Audit of Systems of Gambling Operators (EASGO) – concluded that the websites in question were targeting Bulgarian users without having an active licence under the gambling law.

Upon visiting the websites, some of which were bearing domains from Armenia (.am) and Kazakhstan (.kz), customers were met with advertising banners and accompanying text inviting users to participate in the illegal games by creating a player profile and then opening an account for deposits and withdrawals – all of which made easily accessible.

Roumen Spetsov/LinkedIn
“I order for the provision of online games on the following websites operating without a licence under Bulgarian law to be suspended within three days of this decision,” Spetsov said i..