Conference proceedings, Zurich 2023

shifting to social media. So, and it’s a main point, it’s crucial for the protection of minors, because they are most at risk in this digital landscape. AS: Quirino can you please explain from your experience how are things in Italy in this regard and social media influencers? This is a hot topic, a lot of jurisdictions, we see Brazil is talking about it, France, Canada, are prohibiting, or are talking about prohibiting advertising with influencers in social media. QM: When the advertising ban was implemented, the authority which had been delegated to enforce the ban was not the Gaming Regulatory Agency, but it was the telecoms authority. I’m saying this because the telecoms authority did not even know that it was coming. So they were they were caught completely off guard back then. And they quickly had to run a kind of informal consultation circulating a questionnaire to all stakeholders with very silly questions like, “What is the difference between online gambling and terrestrial gambling” stupid questions, coming from someone, who had no idea that this was coming, okay. And that from one day to another, was the authority in charge of enforcing the ban. So, once they completed this kind of quick gathering of need-to-know information, they published operational guidelines, which explain to the industry what they could do, and what they should not do. In those operational guidelines, there was one single reference to influencers. And that reference was to the extent that influencers cannot do any type of advertising. The Italian word is cheetah publicity and that word was explicitly mentioned. So influencers cannot publicize whether directly or indirectly, the offer of real money gambling services, that was it, nothing more, nothing less. What happened? Obviously, Italians, and Italian operators are very clever. They said, Okay, so I cannot openly publicize. But there is nothing in the operational guidelines bar the decree prohibiting me from teaching users as to how to best play a specific slots game. So a number of influencers started very successfully. And Luis can confirm this because he is familiar with this kind of business model. very successfully launching tutorials, online tutorials, how to play Game of Thrones or other stories, which obviously was a very simple way to talk about a gambling product, a very popular gambling product. Also, the vast majority of YouTube users, which is kids, people that are very often underage. This went completely without any consequences that I’m aware of until the end of 2022. There was a €750,000 fine, that was levied on Meta on grounds that they did not put in the general T and C’s of the agreement they have in place with their advertisers, the explicit restriction that they should not advertise in any way shape or form, the offer of real money gambling services. And what had happened is that as a result of this little loophole in the contract, some Meta advertisers, had profiled their customers, and they were pushing targeted advertising, gambling advertising, that was eventually spotted by the law enforcement authorities. And this resulted in in a fine. Now, talking quickly about fines, there were over the space of five years, a few fines, not many that were issued and enforced against violators. But here’s another inconsistency, there was no objective and coherent criteria to assess the amount of the fine, the advertising ban decree stipulates that the amount of the fine can be anything between five and 20% of the overall value of the advertising. However, the fines that I’m aware of, that became a matter of public record, were €50,000, in one case, €75,000 for another, with not really any kind of consistency. So as if to say, we need to show that you made a violation, we give you a fine. Here it is, we tried not to be too severe. It’s your first violation. So here it is, it’s €50,000. Pay and you’re free to go. If we lawyers have to look at the record, if we have a case where we need to assist a client who received a fine and we wanted to refer to the statutes to the decree, and to the operational guidelines to establish whether under the circumstances this was a legitimate, well-grounded, well-motivated, fine or not, there will be very little support in that sense. And the precedents would be even more useless, because you can go from the €750,000 that was levied on a giant like Meta, which is a little more than a drop in the ocean for them. And I’m sure they were more than happy to pay it and move on. To other fines that were a little more than symbolic. €50,000 it’s still money, but if you look at the value of any advertising campaign, it’s not big money. So what I’m trying to say here is that once again, we do not have a set of rules and a set of precedents that can be applied in a very objective manner. Nowadays, it is possible to

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