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As Portugal heads for an election tinged with casino controversy, the industry’s online trade group says it is firmly focused on the fight against illegal marketing.
Portugal will head to the polls on May 18, following the collapse of its current centre-right minority government.
Questions over a family company connected to Prime Minister Luís Montenegro toppled the existing administration, with the public asked to return to the voting booth barely more than a year since the previous general election.
Montenegro’s family dealings included investments in a company that holds some of Portugal’s 13 land-based casino concessions, creating a tough landscape for gambling industry lobbying, but the head of the country’s online trade group APAJO says it is committed to focusing political attention on the black market.
In particular, says its president, Ricardo Domingues, the association is zeroing in on the influencers who promote unlicensed websites with apparent impunity.
“A big component [of the black market] is the influencers that keep on promoting illegal operators without any real consequence,” he said.
APAJO authored a letter to Portugal’s legal ombudsman (Provedor de Justiça) calling for more joined-up enforcement against illegal advertising. The watchdog has yet to respond to the request.
The trade group has also filed several criminal complaints against influencers and the offshore operators they are alleged to be advertising, including the likes of Stake and BC.Game.
In the meantime, influencers talk openly about illegal marketing and boast about lucrative deals with offshore operators.
“There’s a sense of impunity for influencers in Portugal. Up until now, that has been the case. But we only need to arrest one, then the others will pay attention.”
Law enforcement has so far not acted against influencers, despite APAJO’s efforts, said Domingues.
Even if tangible progress on shutting down unscrupulous influencers is so far hard to come by, Domingues, who is also a marketing executive at operator Betclic, says that his group’s efforts are at least starting to raise customer awareness.
“Sometimes now, when you see an influencer promoting an illegal operator, you see the customer is pointing it out,” he said.
APAJO also wants the EU to award it the status of a so-called “trusted flagger” under the bloc’s Digital Services Act.
That would enable the trade group to force Google and others to remove search results for unlicensed gambling companies, which currently populate searches alongside approved operators.
The trade association also sees advertising as an area of potential vulnerability, but is talking up the potential of technological solutions in an effort to dodge a regulatory crackdown.
“What we’re looking to do is evolve to a solution where all TV advertising, including free-to-air, will be programmatic. It will be based on the profiles of the boxes at home,” he said, meaning that gambling advertising would only appear to viewers believed to be of legal gambling age.
Aware that the gambling industry may not have the political heft alone to enact these innovations, Domingues says he is working with the alcohol and junk food industries, which have their own needs to carefully target advertising to avoid further restrictions.
“Sugar consumption in kids is a huge problem,” he said, “so when you find a solution for that, you find a solution for gambling.”
Even sporting events could benefit from this kind of hyper-local advertising, he said.
“It obviously makes sense to advertise [gambling] around sports, however, we do understand concerns that regulators and politicians have, and I think we need to be using creativity and technology to find solutions.”
AI could be integrated into existing technology where ads are digitally altered for different territories so that they avoid at-risk audiences, he suggested.
More immediately, APAJO is pushing for Portugal’s gambling regulator to permit various product features that are commonplace in several other markets, including early cash-outs on bets, bet builders and live casino games.
Any progress on moving away from the country’s turnover-based gambling tax rate to a model based on revenue appears elusive, however.
The results of Portugal’s election on May 18, taking place in the tenth year since the country introduced its new Gambling Act, are still uncertain.
Despite the scandals surrounding Luís Montenegro, the so-called two-party Democratic Alliance, formed of the CDS – People's Party (CDS–PP) and the Prime Minister’s Social Democratic Party (PSD), is still polling ahead of their rivals.
However, the centre-right duo is not currently projected to achieve a majority in parliament, and has a lead of only five points over the centre-left Socialist Party (PS), according to polls collated by Politico.
Whatever the outcome, gambling is likely to be a touchy subject in the early days of the new administration.
For APAJO’s part, Domingues says the group will remain committed to its current priorities.
“If the existing party gets elected, there is a coalition led by the existing party, we’re going to be doing the same as before. If the opposition wins, we’ll start our work as well.
“We work with the parliamentary groups to explain the reason why we do what we do, and the product needs to be regulated in a certain way,” he said.
