Lithuania fines gambling employee for ad breach

A court has slapped a Cbet employee with a €1,500 fine for breaching advertising rules.

Lithuania.- A court has ordered an employee at online gambling firm Cbet to pay €1,500 for ordering advertising that contained more content than is permitted.

The breach took place shortly after Lithuania introduced new rules on November 1 2019, limiting the information that can be shown in gambling adverts to the name, registered trademarks and types of gambling offered. 

No extra written, visual or audio content is allowed, but Cbet adverts shown on the television channels TV3, Lietuvos Ryto TV and BTV featured extra content including an image of the actor Mindaugas Papinigis and several unregistered trademarks.

The court remarked that the Lithuanian regulator, the Gambling Supervisory Authority, had informed all licensed operators of the changes in rules when they came into effect and so staff should have known about the new rules. Its decision is not open to appeal.

The court’s decision comes just after the regulator’s publication of a new survey that found most Lithuanians were in favour of even tougher restrictions on gambling advertising. 

Meanwhile in the UK, the national advertising watchdog has seen a decrease in the number of gambling ads seen by children.