Spanish government penalizes 15 operators for breaching Gambling Law

The Directorate General for the Regulation of Gaming (DGOJ), part of the Spanish Ministry of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030, penalized 15 operators of the online betting and gambling sector for "serious or very serious" infractions during the first semester of 2024. 

The fines amount to EUR 65,325,000 (over $69.1 million) and 13 of them are due to very serious infractions as they are foreign online gambling operators that were operating without a license in Spain and were identified by the DGOJ.

The companies sanctioned for very serious violations are Interactive Pro, Stars Cream, Loveca Sino, Rougeca Sino, Mountberg, Alimanieri, Goldenpharaoh, Goldenlion, Golden Genie, Bigwins Games Tech, Games & More, Gladiator Holding and R.Bostock Enterprises. For each of these companies, the penalty is EUR 5 million and they were also suspended for two years.

The serious violations, on the other hand, are for two operators in the industry that, although they have a license, have incurred some type of offense. These two companies are Codere and Electraworks, and the two fines combined amount to a total of EUR 325,000.

Although so far it is not known with certainty why Codere and Electraworks were sanctioned, the Gaming Regulation Law includes 16 types of infractions.

"As a result of the latest amendment to the Gaming Regulation Law (LRJ), which establishes that serious and very serious infractions that are final in administrative proceedings will be published on the DGOJ's website, the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and 2030 Agenda has made public the sanctioning resolutions that have become final since July 2021," the entity said in a statement. 

The DGOJ added that, since 2021, the number of published sanctions amounts to 154, as follows: 19, in the second half of 2021; 73 in 2022; 30 in the first half of 2023; 17 in the second half of 2023, and 15 in the first half of 2024, and has imposed fines for a total value of more than EUR 398 million.