The Armenian parliament passed on Friday a set of new restrictions to gambling advertising. The law was approved by a vote of\u00a063 to 24\u00a0abstentions in a second and final reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new legislation restricts the advertisement of gambling by casinos, lotteries, bookmakers or other organizations that provide gaming, reports the ARKA News Agency<\/em>. Gambling advertising is now only allowed in four-star and higher hotels, border checkpoints, companies\u2019 websites, and the front of buildings offering gambling, while prohibited in any other places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Deputy Minister of Finance Armen Hayrapetyan, who put the amendments forward explained that the restrictions return to those of 2020, a point in time in which advertising was only allowed through the four aforementioned ways. The Ministry of Finance serves as the Armenian gambling licensing authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The changes now approved were harshly criticized by advertising companies, which claim that about 60-70% of their income is generated through online gambling games. However, the Armenian government has countered that other estimates position this figure way below that, at about only 20-25%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Civil Contract Party MP Tsovinar Vardanyan remarked that the bill is part of her party\u2019s promise to fight gambling addiction in the country, reports Armenpress<\/em>. According to the government, the number of bets made in 2020 increased 6 times when compared to pre-pandemic 2018, and young people are now getting addicted to gambling as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Babken Tunyan, head of the parliamentary committee on economic issues, warned in earlier debates on the proposed changes that about 3.2 trillion drams ($6.2 billion) worth of bets were made in the country from January to November 2021, while in comparison, the government\u2019s revenues from last year amounted to 1.6 trillion drams ($3.1 billion).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hayrapetyan defended the need of banning advertising across all media formats -including television, radio and press- by stating comparisons to international trends position Armenia at a very risky spot: gambling is increasing at a very fast pace, thus also leading to more problem gambling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Deputy Minister of Finance told the Armenian parliament that, in comparison to the UK, where one in six players becomes a gambler, the country\u2019s index is \u201csix times higher.\u201d According to a study by the State Revenue Committee, wagering volumes are also well above those in neighboring countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Armenian parliament passed on Friday a set of new restrictions to gambling advertising. The law was approved by a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":768,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leylaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leylaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leylaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leylaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leylaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.leylaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1025,"href":"https:\/\/www.leylaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/1025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leylaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leylaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leylaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leylaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Tsovinar Vardanyan promises to fight gambling addiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n