Regulatory Update: Romania’s Gambling Regulator Issues Its First Content-Based Advertising Decision Under Former President Vlad Soare
Romania’s gambling regulator (ONJN) recently sanctioned a licensed operator over an advertising campaign. This is reportedly the first time the regulator has sanctioned an operator over the actual content of an ad, and it happened shortly before its president, Vlad Cristian Soare, was dismissed and replaced with Valentin-Ioan Tomescu.
Here, the ad wasn’t missing any of the usual boxes, it had the “18+” mark, the license number, even a “Play Responsibly” line.
So, what went wrong?
- The rules
ONJN has the power to supervise, control, and sanction gambling operators, including how they advertise, under Government Emergency Ordinance no. 20/2013 and Government Emergency Ordinance no. 77/2009.
Advertising licensed gambling is legal in Romania. But the law conditions it on a set of principles, and chief among them is “responsible participation” or commonly and widely known as the “responsible gambling” principle.
According to the Statement of Reasons, in its decision, the ONJN examined the facts and concluded that formal elements are necessary for compliance but not sufficient:
“On a combined reading of these provisions, gambling advertising is not subject solely to formal requirements concerning the manner in which advertising materials are presented; rather, it must observe, through the very content and message conveyed to the public, the principle of responsible participation in gambling”.
2. The ad
The campaign, run across a street billboard, YouTube, and Instagram, featured a character dressed as a doctor: white coat, stethoscope, medical office. The tagline: “Easy to use between appointments. Give it a try!” A companion video went further asking “Where do you like to do it?”, to which the “doctor” replies, “In my office, after the last patient.”
The ONJN did not confine its assessment to whether the mandatory formal elements (the “18+” mark, the licence details, the “Play Responsibly” line) were present. Instead, it examined the campaign on several levels: the message conveyed by the wording (“between appointments,” “after the last patient,” “Give it a try!”); the visual presentation and its cumulative elements (the white coat, the stethoscope, the medical office, the references to “appointments” and a “patient”); the frequency with which participation was associated with recurring moments of the day; and the materials as a whole, treated as a single, coordinated campaign across multiple channels rather than analysed in isolation.
3. The sanction and the reasoning
The regulator’s analysis rested on a few connected points:
- Substance over form.
ONJN shows that what counts is the overall message the ad sends to consumers: “In fact, it is necessary to analyse the advertising message as a whole and, in particular, the gambling behaviour that it presents to the public as normal, acceptable, and worth following.”
- Frequency is a risk.
By turning recurring daily moments – “between appointments,” “after the last patient” -into cues to gamble – ONJN considers that the campaign normalizes the idea that any free minute is a good moment to play:
“The essence of the message’s structure: when there is a free interval between two activities, it can be used for gambling – the implied idea being: try doing the same yourself (the recurring moments of the working day are turned into occasions for play, and the recipient is expressly invited to reproduce this behaviour, through the phrase ‘Give it a try’). We consider that such a message is incompatible with the principle of responsible participation in gambling, through its suggestion of turning free intervals into occasions for taking part in play. […]
The principle of responsible participation implies a controlled and delimited relationship between the participant and the activity of play and is incompatible with promoting behavioural models that favour the repetitive integration of gambling into daily routine. […] what is relevant is not only how long the participant is suggested to play in a given session, but also how often they are encouraged to return to it.”
- Borrowing a trusted profession.
Using a doctor, someone associated with health and responsibility, was treated as an aggravating factor, considered to be lending the behaviour an appearance of safety: “It must be observed that accepting such a practice would open the way to the use of other trusted professions for similar commercial purposes (for example, a magistrate promoting gambling, a police officer advertising the same product, or a doctor associating themselves with the promotion of alcohol consumption). Such a practice may harm the prestige and standing of these professions even though the law does not expressly prohibit the use of the image of persons belonging to certain professions in gambling advertising, it would hollow out the protective purpose pursued by the principle in question.”
- Proportionality.
ONJN states that the right to advertise can’t be used to hollow out the legal duty to protect consumers. Here, in the regulator’s assessment, that balance is considered to have been tipped the wrong way:
“In this case, what is sanctioned is not the fact that the operator promoted its product, nor the mere use of a commercial call to action, but rather the specific manner in which the right to promote was exercised, through the construction of a message which, analysed as a whole, turns gambling into a natural activity for filling everyday breaks, encourages the multiplication of occasions for participation, and uses the image of the doctor to reinforce the acceptability and normality of this behaviour. In these circumstances, the operator’s commercial interest in generating participation through advertising was pursued without genuinely integrating the legal requirements concerning responsible gambling. […]
This is the fair balance that the regulatory framework requires and which, in the situation analysed, was not observed.”
Conclusion
The operator was fined, however ONJN does not have the power to order the modification, withdrawal, or cessation of the broadcasting of the advertising material within audiovisual media services. Therefore, the ONJN notified the National Audiovisual Council, the competent authority in Romania in matters of audiovisual content and compliance with the rules applicable to audiovisual commercial communications.
For businesses, the practical lesson is that a campaign built on the required labels may still fall short. Whether this approach becomes settled practice, particularly following the change in ONJN’s leadership, will be worth watching in the decisions that follow.
Statement of Reasons Excerpt can be found here (in Romanian): Extras Motivare2
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