Independent body to monitor EGBA member advertising during Euro 2020

The European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA) is the body tasked with monitoring the advertisements, whilst global analytics company Nielsen tracks the advertising content of EGBA members.

The tracking will be conducted across social media and digital advertising as well as television, specifically focused on four EU countries – Greece, Romania, Sweden, and Ireland.

The EASA will then send the analysis of the tracking results to the EGBA, potentially including suggestions of how the code of conduct can be improved.

EGBA secretary general Maarten Haijer said: “EGBA members are committed to advertising in a socially responsible way, even more so during prominent events like the EURO 2020 football championships.

“EGBA’s responsible advertising code puts this commitment into action and independent third-party monitoring of the code will support both compliance and trust in the code. 

“We hope gambling authorities around Europe will acknowledge the efforts made by EGBA members to raise the bar in responsible advertising standards.” 

EGBA launched its advertising code in April 2020. It includes a section on content moderation and how gambling advertising should look, as well as a focus on minor protection, whereby adverts should not be shown during broadcasts dedicated to minors, while also setting out details regarding age screening tools on social media to protect minors.

The code also covers first-of-their-kind measures for social media marketing, in terms of age-gating on the social media profiles of gambling brands to ensure minors do not have access.