Browsing by Subject "Online gambling"

Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract Gambling is a staple in cultures around the world. As society and technology evolved, so did gambling – going from brick-and-mortar venues to mobile applications. However, gambling is a service that is currently not subject to harmonization within Member States of the European Union. This makes for a very different set of rules on how to regulate gambling, especially its online gambling category and the steps gambling operators have to take to ensure that its services are, and remain, a safe environment and also protect children and other vulnerable persons. This work will analyze online gambling, but only through the lenses of its marketing effects on children and how different Member States (or former Member State in the case of the United Kingdom) approach the matter. The aim is to find out if there is currently a system capable of successfully achieving the protection of children on its marketing regulations. Besides issues concerning consumer law, gambling also has a direct effect on the protection of children – a core value of the European Union. In Chapter 1, the goal and reasons for this study will be introduced, as well as the methodology chosen to conduct this research. Chapter 2 will look back to the origins of Gambling, how it became a legitimate business and set out the current gambling scenario in the European Union. Chapter 3 will analyze the types of marketing used by online gambling websites and how children interact with advertisement in general and how they are firstly introduced to gambling. Following on Chapter 4, the duality between children’s right and gambling will be examined. In Chapter 5, a comparison between the current regulations set out by Malta, Sweden, and the United Kingdom will be made, and Chapter 6 will bring examples of decisions by advertisement agencies that upheld citizen’s complaints for being aimed at children. Chapter 7 evaluates new features in videogames that could be equal to gambling and how the European Union is dealing with it. Followed by a quick look into the additional protection for gamblers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, taking everything into account we recommend that at least in the respect of protection of children (especially via marketing) gambling should be harmonized in the Internal Market, and proposes a hybrid model taking the best parts of the regulations examined in this study. However, further research is recommended.