New rules, which ban gambling advertising in football, will cost Serie A, Italy’s top division football league, $816 million in losses.
The Italian club football’s top flight, Serie A has expressed “extreme worry” with regard to the new ruling that has put a blanket ban on all advertising related to gambling. The league said in a statement that the new rules would create disparity with the other European countries and would bring “competitive disadvantages to Italian clubs, diverting abroad advertising budgets aimed at Serie A teams”.
More than half of the Serie A clubs have sponsorship deals in place with firms from the gambling sector. The league estimated that the ban would represent a loss of some €700 million ($816 million) to the state coffers.
Italy’s Council of Ministers has approved a blanket ban on gambling advertising in the country from 1st January, 2019.
Some last-minute changes were made to the ‘Dignity Decree’, allowing advertisers with existing agreements that stretch beyond New Year’s Day next year to be granted a concession to fulfil their contracts, and excluding the state-run national lottery or its products.
The ban will apply to all gambling-related products and services across all media platforms – including television, websites and radio – and sports clubs will also be prohibited from carrying sponsors from the industry.
Heavy fines are being introduced for non-compliance, at a minimum of €50,000, with the fines being donated to the fund against pathological gambling.
The ban was authored on 2nd July by Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio, the leader of the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement (M5S) which became the largest party in Italy’s coalition government earlier this year. The party has swept to power from obscurity less than a decade ago on the back of a string of radical reform proposals. The Deputy Prime Minister has previously said that he will lobby for the introduction of broader gambling advertising restrictions across the European Union.
The new decree has been met with dismay by trade associations representing the different parts of the gambling industry, including soccer teams.
On the other hand, in a recent open letter to Di Maio, Italian-licensed gambling operator LeoVegas has warned that the ad ban won’t achieve a significant reduction in the problem of gambling activity, as it will lead to a surge in advertising by gambling operators not holding Italian licenses. It encouraged the coalition to “revise” its proposal to address the issue of problem gambling “without populist slogans and action.”
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