The game has been at the center of the biggest corruption scandal to hit the EU’s poorest country in recent years. [Shutterstock/Netfalls Rémy Musser]
Bulgaria banned casinos from opening in cities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants and banned gambling advertising in all types of media, with the maximum number of deputies voting in favor of the new bill.
The bill, introduced less than a week ago, was approved for a vote on the last day of parliament.
Proposed by GERB (EPP) and DPS (Renew Europe), the bill received 198 votes in favour, with no votes against or abstentions in the 240-seat Bulgarian Parliament.
The game has been at the center of the biggest corruption scandal to hit the EU’s poorest country in recent years.
While gambling advertising became visual in 2015, when the country’s biggest gambling boss, Vasil Bozhkov, and his personal lotteries became the biggest advertisers in Bulgarian media, in 2020, regardless, the parliament shut down his business, after which the United States sanctioned Bozhkov for corruption.
The closure of Bozhkov’s gaming business in 2020 opened a niche for several small online gaming operators, which in 3 years have become the biggest source of profit for Bulgarian media.
According to official data, in 2023 gambling companies spent €85 million on media advertising, with the highest percentage being Bulgarian companies Efbet and Winbet and Greece’s Betano.
In the past three years, many new casinos and gaming halls have been built in major Bulgarian cities. In 2023, competitive advertising from gambling sites completely invaded Bulgarian television during the World Cup in Qatar.
The ban on gambling advertising did not go unnoticed by national television channels and several news sites, which said on Monday that they relied heavily on the sites’ advertising.
They warned that the new law could damage the independence of the media.
“The prohibition of advertising in the media is a prohibition of the provision of a media service within the meaning of the Directive on Audiovisual Media Services,” the Association of Bulgarian Broadcasters (ABO) stated, adding that the monetary viability of the media, especially through gambling advertising, it’s for quality journalism.
The gambling sector is “in favour” of restricting gambling advertising, said Stilyan Shishkov, founder of Bulgaria’s largest sports newspaper, Sportal. bg, and executive director of the Bulgarian Gambling Association, warning that this can only lead to the expansion of the grey sector.
“As the experience of other European markets shows, the restriction of advertising leads to an increase in the activity of unlicensed sites, which reduces the state’s ability to collect taxes and fees on gambling activities and the coverage of those users,” Chichkov said.
Commercial broadcasters claim that they will be deprived of huge annual revenues, making it difficult to rebroadcast major sporting events. The economic weekly Capital wonders if the reduction in the revenues of the largest private television channels is aimed at controlling them through political actors.
Once the law is passed, gambling corporations will only be able to promote it outdoors on billboards at a minimum distance of three hundred meters from schools, kindergartens, universities, arcades, and sports equipment and facilities, unless they are intended for children.
Gambling advertising in the media will only be allowed for the national lottery “Bulgarian Sports Totalizer”, which will have to use its profits to finance Bulgarian sport.
At the same time, restrictions were imposed on the Romanian gambling market, in which some Bulgarian corporations showed great interest. Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu on Tuesday warned gambling corporations that their licenses would be revoked if they did not comply with the law banning slot machines. in small towns, in an attempt to combat the alarming rates of gambling addiction in the country.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv. bg)