Transactional TV Gambling To Be Treated As Teleshopping
On 26 May 2009, Ofcom announced in a statement on the Regulation
of Transactional TV Gambling Channels that all transactional TV
gambling services or transactional gambling "windows" on
TV that invite viewers to pay money to take part in gaming (such as
roulette or bingo) or to place bets (for example, on virtual horse
or dog races) will be treated as teleshopping.
Ofcom stated that:
Licensees who choose to provide services comprising
transactional gambling should be treated as providing teleshopping,
rather than editorial output (e.g. output designed to be
"genuine programming"), which will therefore require a
teleshopping licence. This will also apply to transactional
gambling "windows" (gaming or betting features that
appear on otherwise editorial services usually of between 15
minutes to three hours in length).
Licensees will still be able to decide which output they wish
to provide, i.e. a purely editorial gambling-themed service or a
teleshopping service. However, to qualify as editorial, any such
services should provide genuine programming and not include
transactional gambling in which offers are made - express or
implied - to viewers to participate in the services on screen.
Prior to this announcement, licencees who wished to provide
transactional gambling services had the choice of the form of
authorisation to apply for, and could either apply to be authorised
for editorial output, or for teleshopping. This meant that similar
channels were regulated under different codes and by different
bodies.
Transactional gambling services will, as from 1 June 2009, be
regulated as teleshopping, being advertising consisting of direct
offers to the public, under the Broadcast Committee of Advertising
Practice Code ("BCAP Code") administered through the
Advertising Standards Authority. Accordingly, licensees operating
under an existing "editorial" licence in respect of
transactional gambling services/windows should ensure they are also
compliant with the BCAP Code.
Ofcom has indicated that the implementation of the policy change
will be made quickly, with variations to existing licences taking
place by mid-June. Ofcom will be contacting those licensees who
hold "editorial" licences with details of the proposed
variations and will provide the opportunity to make representations
on the proposed variations.
The reclassification of transactional gambling windows within
otherwise editorial content as teleshopping windows took effect
from 1 June 2009...
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