Malta Gaming Authority launches new responsible advertising guidelines

The Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) has announced several new advertising standards for Malta-licensed operators in the areas of responsible gambling, player protection and sponsorships.

Under the new rules, all advertisements must be socially responsible, with regard to the need to protect minors and other vulnerable persons from harm or exploitation.

Operators are required to display responsible gambling messaging within all commercial communications and must clearly display age-restricted warnings on their respective sites.

Adverts must not portray gaming in an irresponsible way through imagery or content and must not suggest that skill can influence the outcome of a game that is purely a game of chance.

All ads must not provide false or untruthful information about the chances of winning or expected return from gaming and should not refer to any service which provides credit to players.

Operators are also required to not issue any further communications to players who request to be excluded from marketing within three days of receipt of a request to do so, subject to a grace period of 24 hours.

All licensed operators are prohibited from making inducements such as free spins, bonuses and promotional items to any player who has “shown intention” to cease gambling.

This includes measures such as electronic communications but excludes pop-ups which are solely intended for the player to confirm that he/she would like to terminate the gaming session or activity.

Promotional schemes carried out by licensed operators will now be subject to the Maltese Consumer Affairs Act and must be clear, factually accurate and not misleading.

Under the new standards, all sponsorships are limited to text, logo or imagery that serve the exclusive purpose of identifying the authorized person and excludes product placement.

Any sponsorships of activities where the audience is “reasonably expected to be composed of minors or of vulnerable persons, or which have particular appeal to minors or vulnerable persons” is also prohibited. All sponsorship by licenced operators of minors or of persons of legal gaming age portrayed as minors is also expressly prohibited under the new rules.

No details have been provided as to the penalties for breaching these new rules, however the MGA does retain powers to suspend operator licences and can even cancel them entirely if breaches of regulations are serious enough.

As part of the new standards, a new Commercial Communications Committee will be set up to provide oversight of licenced operators to ensure compliance with these new standards.

The full regulatory guidelines can be found here.