Asturias Makes Promoting Gambling to Minors a Serious Offence in New Child Law

Asturias has written the promotion of gambling and online betting to children into its new child protection law as a serious infringement, with fines of up to €60,000. The text gives way wherever gambling law already applies, which leaves its real reach outside the industry's own advertising.

• Asturias' Law 8/2026 on Childhood and Adolescence lists the promotion of games of chance and online betting to children among its serious infringements, with fines of €6,001 to €60,000
• The law was promulgated on 15 October, published in the regional gazette on 23 October, reproduced in Spain's state gazette on 6 November, and takes effect on 23 November
• Under its own terms, the infringement applies only where the conduct is not already an infringement under gambling, audiovisual, consumer or other sectoral law
• The region's gaming law already requires prior authorisation for gambling advertising and fines unauthorised advertising at €600.01 to €6,000, a tenth of the new ceiling
• The measure comes as Spain's 17 regions defend their land-based gambling powers against the national ministry

A Child Protection Law, Not an Amendment to the Gaming Law

The provision sits in Article 127 of the Ley del Principado de Asturias 8/2026, de 15 de octubre, de Infancia y Adolescencia, a 134-article law approved by the Junta General, the regional parliament, and promulgated by President Adrián Barbón. It replaces the region's 1995 child protection law, which set no fines, and adds a sanctions regime the old law lacked. It was published in the regional gazette on 23 October and in the Boletín Oficial del Estado on 6 November, and enters into force one month after its regional publication, on 23 November.

Article 127.12 makes a serious infringement of "the advertising and promotion of habits and behaviours that are unhealthy or dangerous to the physical or mental health of children and adolescents". These include "in all cases" those "related to the consumption of toxic substances, the promotion of games of chance and online betting, or the glorification of anorexia or bulimia, among others".

Article 127.13 adds a second serious infringement: selling, renting, offering or distributing to children, by any means, publications, videos, video games or other audiovisual material that encourage the consumption of substances or games of chance, where the conduct is not a criminal offence.

The Fines and Who Pays Them

Article 129 sets fines of €6,001 to €60,000 for serious infringements, €300 to €6,000 or a written warning for minor ones, and €60,001 to €600,000 for very serious ones. A serious infringement becomes very serious where it causes harm to children's rights that is impossible or difficult to repair, or where more than two serious infringements are confirmed within a year. Where the profit from an infringement exceeds the fine, the fine rises by the amount of that profit.

Individuals and companies are both liable, and the authorities may publish final sanctions for serious and very serious infringements in the regional gazette, naming the offender, at the offender's cost.

The law does not touch distances from schools, age checks at venue doors or the licensing of gaming halls. Those remain in Law 6/2014 on Gaming and Betting, which bars minors from gaming venues and allows regulations to set exclusion zones around schools.

The Subsidiarity Clause Defines the Reach

Article 123.1 limits the new infringements to conduct that is not already an infringement under audiovisual, consumer, public entertainment, gambling or health law. A licensed operator advertising without authorisation in Asturias already commits a serious infringement under Article 49 of the gaming law, and online operators answer to the national regulator, the Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ). The child law's tenfold higher ceiling therefore lands mainly where gambling law does not: on promoters, content and material outside the industry's licensing regimes. That is a narrower target than the headline suggests, though a real one.

The Fine Gap Will Invite Argument

The same conduct can carry a ceiling of €6,000 under one Asturian law and €60,000 under another, depending on which applies. The clause decides which, and contested cases will turn on it. Operators whose campaigns reach children through third parties, such as influencers, may find themselves arguing that the gambling law, with its lower fines, is the one that governs. Spain's consumer affairs ministry consulted on curbing celebrity and influencer gambling advertising this year, but no draft reached the Council of Ministers before the general election was called.

Regions Are Using Their Own Competences

Asturias has not legislated on online gambling, which it cannot license. It has used its exclusive competence over child protection, set in its Statute of Autonomy, to reach gambling promotion from another direction. It has done so while national measures for minors stall: the ban on paid random rewards in video games lapsed when Congress was dissolved in October. The approach fits the insistence of Spain's regions that they, not Madrid, protect vulnerable people on their territory.

The new infringement is broad in wording and narrow in application, because the law steps aside wherever gambling rules apply. How Asturias resolves the first case that falls between the two laws will show whether it has teeth.