The Spanish authorities have published the draft decree regulations on online slots and exchange betting. This publication launches a public-consultation phase that will last until March 27, during which any interested party is going to be entitled to file comments on these two draft regulations.
The publication also confirms that the Spanish regulator will be re-opening the market for new entrants, which in the near future are going to be entitled to apply for the licenses allowing them to start operating in Spain.
The publication of these two draft regulations constitutes the first step in the official procedure to be followed and that should lead to the final approval of these new regulations in the next three or four months.
The main features of the two draft decrees can be summarized as follows:
1. Draft Decree on Slots
This draft regulation is the first step that should lead to the offering in Spain of one of the key products for the industry, which was missing from the currently existing catalogue of allowed games. The text published by the Spanish authorities is aimed at ensuring a good balance between the possibility of offering competitive slot products with responsible gambling standards.
The concept of “slot machine games” is quite broad, being defined as any game that, in consideration for the price of a play, allows the player to use the game with the purpose of obtaining a combination of signs or graphical representations that, pursuant to the applicable particular rules of that game, implies being awarded with a given prize. Such an abstract definition would appear to allow the operation of quite a large range of slots games.
2. Draft Decree on Exchange Betting
This draft regulation is aimed at covering the hole that existed in the Spanish regulatory framework in regard to this type of betting. Exchange betting was already accepted in the Spanish Gambling Act (adopted on May 2011) as a valid system of betting, but the lack of secondary regulations articulating the offering of this type of products has impeded the corresponding exploitation in Spain.
In the text that has been published last week, exchange betting is defined as any “bet resulting from matching an offered bet and a counter-offered bet, both issued by different players on a particular event or market in which the gaming operator acts only as an intermediary and guarantor of the amounts placed among participants in such bets.”
