Your landing page gets redesigned once a year if you’re lucky. The regulations on gambling advertising in Europe and the Americas get rewritten every quarter, usually with less warning and no design review. I’ve launched more than 600 sites across different GEOs, and the launches that tripped on compliance almost never did it because someone ignored the law. They tripped because someone was working from last year’s version of it. So this guide is a living table: four axes (advertising, affiliates, influencers, and bonuses) across the GEOs that matter most for affiliates, checked at the end of October 2026 and updated every quarter.
What’s inside:
- How to read the four axes
- The master table by GEO
- The UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Ontario, and US states, one section each
- The platform layer: Google Ads, Meta, and TikTok
- What the table means for your next launch
- FAQ
How to Read Gambling Ad Rules on Four Axes
Most compliance summaries list laws. That’s useful for lawyers and useless for a media plan. When I review a new GEO, I ask four questions, because each one maps to a budget line:
- Advertising: can you buy reach at all? TV, radio, outdoor, paid social, and programmatic, plus time windows and audience-age rules.
- Affiliates: can third parties promote licensed operators, under what registration, and on what pay model? Some GEOs ban RevShare (revenue share commission) outright, which changes the economics of every deal.
- Influencers: can creators, athletes, and celebrities appear in or post gambling content, and who is liable when they break a rule?
- Bonuses: can operators offer welcome bonuses, and can anyone advertise them in public? These are two different questions, and Ontario answers them differently.
Why Affiliate Rules Change the Whole Model
The affiliate axis is where regulation quietly rewrites the business. The same SEO asset is worth very different money depending on whether the GEO allows performance pay, and that’s before any ad rule kicks in. If you’re still deciding between affiliate deal structures, check the target GEO first and the operator’s offer second. Every status in this guide was checked at the end of October 2026 against regulators, official gazettes, and court rulings, and the next update lands in early 2027.
The Master Table: Gambling Marketing Rules by GEO (October 2026)
This is the table to bookmark. One row per GEO, one column per axis, and the latest dated change so you can see how fresh the rule is.
| GEO | Advertising | Affiliates | Influencers | Bonuses | Latest change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | Allowed under the CAP Code; no strong appeal to under-18s, no media with 25%+ under-18 audience | Allowed; operator liable for partners | Allowed with strict youth-appeal and under-25 rules | Max 10x wagering; mixed-product offers banned | Bonus rules in force January 19, 2026 |
| Netherlands | Untargeted ads banned; online only under strict targeting | Allowed, with proof ads avoid vulnerable groups | Role models and athletes banned | Allowed today; ban planned | Full ad and bonus ban announced June 12, 2026 |
| Germany | Casino, slots, and poker: no radio or internet ads 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. | Allowed; no revenue-, deposit-, or stake-based pay | Allowed within general ad rules; no odds ads during live events | Allowed within licence conditions | Treaty evaluation due end of 2026 |
| Spain | TV and radio 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. only; no shirt sponsorship | Allowed | Allowed again since 2024; restoration of ban proposed | Welcome bonuses allowed again; ban proposed | Gambling Law reform consultation, spring 2026 |
| Italy | Near-total ban, including sponsorship and digital | Gray zone: neutral information only | Banned as advertising | Can’t be promoted publicly | AGCOM RG-campaign guidelines, March 2026 |
| Brazil | Allowed for licensed operators with standardized warnings | Allowed; liable for their ads | Allowed; liable, accreditation proposed | Sign-up bonuses banned | CONAR Annex X update in force September 27, 2026 |
| Ontario | Allowed for registered operators | Allowed; operator liable; registered brands only | No athletes; no influencers appealing to minors | Can’t be advertised publicly | Athlete ban in force February 28, 2024 |
| US states | Allowed per state; 21+ audiences standard | Registration or vendor licence in many states | 21+ talent; no college athletes | Allowed; no “risk-free” wording | State-by-state, ongoing |
What the Table Says About 2027
Read the last column top to bottom and a pattern jumps out: almost every dated change in 2026 moved liability down the chain, from operators to the affiliates, agencies, and creators who carry the message. Creator campaigns took the biggest hit, so if you plan iGaming influencer campaigns in Europe or Brazil, start from the influencer column and work backward. Search, meanwhile, keeps getting written into the rules as the channel regulators tolerate best.
United Kingdom: UKGC Licence Conditions Plus the CAP Code
The UK runs a two-key system. The Gambling Commission (UKGC) licenses operators and controls the product, including bonuses, while the Committee of Advertising Practice writes the ad rules (the CAP Code) and the Advertising Standards Authority enforces them. If your creative passes one key and fails the other, it fails. These are the ad rules that hit affiliates hardest:
- Strong appeal to under-18s is banned. Not “targets kids,” but “could appeal strongly to them,” which covers colors, characters, footballers, and creators with young audiences. CAP and the ASA refreshed this guidance in November 2025.
- Under-25s can’t play a significant role in a gambling ad, whether they appear as models, players, or presenters.
- Audience composition matters. Ads can’t run in media where more than 25% of the audience is under 18, and you need data to prove it.
- Organic social counts. Since September 1, 2025, the CAP Code also covers specified non-paid social posts from UKGC licensees registered outside the UK, which closed the offshore-brand-account loophole.
What UK Rules Mean for Affiliates and Creators
The UKGC holds the licensee responsible for its marketing partners, so your operator’s compliance team is effectively your second editor. Expect pre-approval of creative, tracking-link audits, and fast termination if an ASA ruling lands with your site’s name in it. The verdict: the UK is open to affiliates and creators, but it’s the most documentation-heavy market on this list.
UK Bonus Rules Since January 2026
Since January 19, 2026, under the Gambling Commission’s promotion rules, wagering requirements can’t exceed 10 times the bonus, and promotions that make players use two products (bet on football, unlock slot spins) are banned. Any comparison page still showing a “35x welcome offer” is advertising a product that no longer legally exists. I’ve seen bonus tables survive three redesigns untouched. Don’t let yours be one of them.
The Netherlands: From Untargeted Ad Ban to a Planned Total Ban
The Netherlands is the clearest example of a market closing in slow motion, one dated step at a time. The Kansspelautoriteit (Ksa) licenses operators, and the restrictions have stacked up like this:
| Date | What changed |
|---|---|
| 2022 | Role-model ban: athletes and influencers can’t front online gambling ads |
| July 1, 2023 | Untargeted ads banned (TV, radio, print, billboards); online ads only under strict targeting conditions |
| January 1, 2024 | Sponsorship of TV programs and events banned |
| July 1, 2025 | Transition ends: all sports sponsorship, including club shirts, banned |
| March 2026 | Ksa guidelines on third-party platforms, opt-outs, and proof that ads avoid vulnerable groups |
| June 12, 2026 | Government announces a full online ad ban plus a bonus ban, to be drafted into a bill |
What the Dutch Ad Rules Mean for Affiliates
The March 2026 Ksa guidelines are the part affiliates underestimate. An operator now has to document that its ads, including those placed through partners, don’t reach vulnerable people, and the Ksa says that can mean staying off a platform entirely. If your pitch to a Dutch operator is “we have reach,” you’re selling the exact thing they’re now required to avoid. Lead with audience data instead.
The 2026 Dutch Plan: No Ads, No Bonuses, Search Stays
The cabinet’s June 2026 announcement goes further: a ban on online gambling advertising and on bonuses, including free bets at sign-up. Trade press reports that results for explicit gambling searches would stay allowed, leaving organic search as the last channel. That’s not a loophole. That’s a strategy, and it only works for sites that rank on intent rather than buy reach. My verdict: plan the Netherlands as a search-only market for 2027.
Germany: GlüStV 2021 and the Affiliate Pay Rule Nobody Reads
Germany’s Interstate Treaty on Gambling (GlüStV 2021) puts its marketing rules in one article, Section 5, and the federal regulator GGL enforces them through licence conditions. It’s short, it’s specific, and it contains the single most expensive line in European affiliate marketing:
- Daytime ban for casino products. No radio or internet ads for virtual slots, online poker, or online casino games between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. Sports betting isn’t covered by this window.
- No variable affiliate pay for products that self-excluded players can’t access. The treaty names affiliate links directly and bans revenue-, deposit-, or stake-based commission. Fixed fees only, so RevShare is out, and a CPA that triggers on a deposit sits uncomfortably close to the line.
- Licensed operators only. Licence conditions upheld in a 2024 Munich court ruling require affiliate sites to link exclusively to GGL-licensed brands and to disclose their commission clearly on the page.
- Live sport is a no-go zone for odds advertising on the same event, and stadium advertising is limited to umbrella brand placements on shirts and boards.
Germany’s 2026 Treaty Evaluation and Google’s GGL Filter
The GGL’s full evaluation of the treaty is due by the end of 2026, and interim findings floated extending the daytime window to sports betting and tightening rules on betting ads during matches. Meanwhile, Google only grants gambling ad certification in Germany to GGL-licensed operators and brokers. If your German traffic model assumes RevShare and paid search, it was broken in 2021 and nobody told your spreadsheet. Model Germany on fixed-fee deals and organic, and price the evaluation risk into anything built for sports betting.
Spain: Real Decreto 958/2020 After the Supreme Court Cut
Spain is the market where reading only the original decree gets you the wrong answer. Royal Decree 958/2020 arrived in 2020 as one of Europe’s strictest ad regimes, and then the Supreme Court annulled several of its key articles on April 2, 2024, ruling that a decree can’t impose those limits without a law behind them. The result is a split rulebook:
| Rule from RD 958/2020 | Status as of October 2026 |
|---|---|
| TV and radio gambling ads only from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. | Still in force |
| Shirt and stadium sponsorship ban | Still in force |
| Ban on promotions for new customers (welcome bonuses) | Annulled in 2024 |
| Ban on celebrities and influencers in ads | Annulled in 2024 |
| General ban on ads on websites and online services | Annulled in 2024 |
| Limits on video platforms and social media | Annulled in 2024 |
Spain’s 2026 Push to Restore the Ad Limits
The Consumer Affairs Ministry has spent two years trying to put the annulled rules back with proper legal footing, along two routes:
- The Customer Service Law amendment would bring back the welcome bonus ban. As of mid-2026, it was still in parliament.
- A reform of the 2011 Gambling Law, opened for public consultation in spring 2026, targets celebrity and influencer ads and sign-up promotions. It also proposes that operator pages appear in organic search only for queries directly related to betting. Read that part twice if SEO for casino sites pays your bills in Spain.
The verdict: welcome bonuses and creator campaigns are legal in Spain today, and probably on borrowed time. Build Spanish comparison pages so the bonus block can be removed in an afternoon without breaking the page.
Italy: Decreto Dignità and the Near-Total Ad Ban
Italy is the benchmark for “no.” The 2018 Dignity Decree (Decreto Dignità) banned practically all gambling advertising and sponsorship from 2019 onward: TV, radio, print, digital, social, influencers, and sports shirts. The communications regulator AGCOM enforces it, and its guidelines separate neutral information from promotion. What that means by channel:
- Paid media and sponsorship: banned, including indirect forms. No shirts, no banners, no paid social.
- Creators: a creator showing a branded casino or a promo code is advertising, and AGCOM treats it that way.
- Affiliates: informational comparison content lives in a gray zone. Anything that reads as a call to play, a bonus pitch, or a ranking built to push sign-ups is promotion.
- Bonuses: offers can exist inside a customer account, but pushing them to the public counts as advertising.
Will Italy Lift the Gambling Ad Ban in 2027?
The pressure is real. Sports Minister Andrea Abodi presented a Sports Decree in 2025 that opened the door to sponsorship returning with a 1% levy, and Italy’s failure to qualify for the 2026 World Cup turned the football federation into the loudest voice for repeal. Progress stalled anyway. AGCOM’s March 2026 guidelines let licensed operators run branded responsible gambling campaigns: a narrow opening, not a repeal. My advice: don’t build an Italian traffic plan on a law that hasn’t been written yet. Build it on search, neutral reviews, and patience.
Brazil: SPA Rules, the July 2026 Ordinances, and CONAR Annex X
Brazil is the youngest regulated market on this list and the one moving fastest. The federal betting law (Law 14,790/2023) and the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA) at the Ministry of Finance set the frame, and in 2026 the frame got rebuilt twice in one quarter. Here’s the sequence that matters for marketers:
- July 10, 2026: an interministerial ordinance spells out what counts as abusive or misleading betting advertising and pushes liability down the whole chain: agencies, influencers, and affiliates. Partners must verify an operator’s authorization before signing.
- July 17, 2026: SPA/MF Ordinance 1,964/2026 standardizes the warnings every ad must carry, cutting the choice to three federal messages.
- September 27, 2026: CONAR’s updated Annex X takes effect. Warnings must take at least 10% of the ad’s size or length, children-appealing elements like mascots stay on age-gated owned channels, and CONAR proposes a mandatory accreditation program for influencers and affiliates.
What Brazil’s Rules Mean for Creators, Affiliates, and Bonuses
The big shift is liability. In Brazil, “I just posted the link” is no longer a defense, because influencers and affiliates now answer for the ad alongside the operator. Urgency mechanics like countdown timers and “last chance” bonus copy now read as violations, and sign-up bonuses have been off the table under the federal law since licensed betting launched in January 2025.
A Paper Trail for Every Brazilian Creative
When we look at Brazilian launches, the projects that survive enforcement waves share one habit: every creative has a paper trail. Who approved it, which warning it carries, which licensed brand it points to. Treat Brazil as open, profitable, and allergic to improvisation.
Ontario and US States: North America’s Patchwork
North America doesn’t have one gambling rulebook. It has a province with a very detailed one and a few dozen US states with their own. The common thread: the operator answers for everything its affiliates publish.
Ontario: AGCO Standards for Internet Gaming
Ontario opened its regulated iGaming market on April 4, 2022, and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) wrote the ad rules into its Registrar’s Standards from day one. Three of them shape every affiliate page in the province:
- No public bonus advertising. Inducements, bonuses, and credits can’t be advertised to the public, including through targeted or algorithmic ads. Offers live on the operator’s site or go to players who opted in directly with that operator.
- No athletes, and no influencers who appeal to minors. Since February 28, 2024, active and retired athletes can appear only in responsible gambling messaging.
- No mixing regulated and gray. Affiliates promoting Ontario-registered operators can only push AGCO-registered sites into the Ontario market, and operators must monitor what their partners publish.
That first rule is why Ontario comparison pages look so different from the rest of Canada. If your page shows a “$1,000 welcome bonus” to Ontario traffic, you’re the reason your operator is taking a call from the regulator.
US States: Who Sets Sports Betting and Casino Ad Rules?
There’s no federal gambling ad law in the US, so every state gaming commission writes its own, and online casino is legal in only a handful of states while sports betting covers most of the map. The rules converge on a recognizable core:
| Common US rule | What it means for marketing |
|---|---|
| 21+ audiences and talent | Anyone featured in an ad should be 21 or older under the AGA code, and many states require it |
| No “risk-free” language | Banned in the AGA code since 2023 and in several state rules |
| No college partnerships | No campus deals and no NIL deals with student athletes |
| Affiliate registration | Many states require affiliates to register or hold a vendor license before promoting operators |
| Responsible gambling messaging | Helpline and RG text on every ad, including affiliate placements |
The American Gaming Association’s Responsible Marketing Code is voluntary and binds members only, but in practice it’s the floor every major sportsbook builds on. My rule for US launches: license and registration first, content second. A site that ranks in a state where you aren’t registered isn’t an asset. It’s evidence.
Google Ads, Meta, and TikTok: The Second Rulebook on Top of the Law
A market being legal doesn’t mean a platform will take your money. Every big ad platform runs its own gambling policy on top of national law, and in 2026 all three tightened the screws on intermediaries like affiliates and aggregators.
| Platform | Entry gate | 2026 changes worth knowing | What affiliates should expect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | Country-by-country certification for operators and gambling-promoting content | Since March 2026, accounts must show “good policy health” to keep certification, extended to all gambling categories on September 14. Affiliate certification for Croatia ended October 7 | Certification is an ongoing audit, not a badge. Repeated revocations under one manager account can cost every account in it |
| Meta | Prior written permission, per URL and per country | Permission is manual, and adding a territory means a new request | Affiliate landing pages need permission too, even with no gambling on the page |
| TikTok | Approval only in markets TikTok lists, with local licensing and age targeting | Policy page updated again in August 2026 | Treat it as market-by-market and recheck before every campaign |
Why Platform Policy Breaks Affiliate Plans
Platform rules change on a few weeks’ notice, and the change logs read like terms of service because they are. Google posted its Colombia lottery update on October 5, 2026, to take effect on October 21: 16 days from notice to live. That’s shorter than most affiliate content calendars, and if your plan leans on short-form video for betting brands, TikTok’s market list is the first thing to check, not the last. The rule I give every team: build your traffic model so that losing one platform costs you a channel, not the business.
Your 2027 iGaming Marketing Compliance Checklist by GEO
Regulation isn’t a reason to stay out of a market. It’s the brief. The GEOs that look scariest on paper often have the least competition, because half the field gave up at the first PDF. Here’s what I’d do tomorrow morning:
- Run your portfolio through the four axes. One row per GEO, same columns as the master table. Any cell you can’t fill is a risk you’re carrying blind.
- Make bonus blocks modular. UK pages need 10x-compliant offers, Ontario pages need none in public, and Spain and the Netherlands may lose them entirely. Removing a block should take minutes, not a redesign.
- Fix pay models before traffic. In Germany, a RevShare deal isn’t a commercial choice. It’s a breach.
- Keep a paper trail per creative. Approval, warning text, licensed brand, date. Brazil and the Netherlands now expect it, and everyone else is heading there.
- Put review dates in the calendar. Germany’s treaty evaluation is due by the end of 2026, and the Dutch bill, the Spanish law changes, and any Italian sponsorship reform will land in 2027 or later.
This table gets updated every quarter, so check back before your next launch rather than after it. If you’d rather not run that audit alone, talk to SEO Stars and Growth Stars and we’ll map your GEOs against it together.
FAQ on Gambling Advertising Laws by Country
Which Countries Restrict Gambling Advertising the Most?
Among the GEOs in this guide, Italy is the strictest: the Dignity Decree bans almost all gambling advertising and sponsorship. The Netherlands is next and moving closer, with untargeted ads and sports sponsorship already banned and a full online ad ban announced in June 2026. Spain and Germany sit in the middle, with time windows and pay-model limits rather than outright bans.
Do Gambling Affiliates Need a Licence?
It depends on the GEO. The UK and Germany don’t license affiliates separately but make operators answer for them, so the operator’s contract becomes your rulebook. Many US states require affiliate registration or a vendor licence before you promote anyone, and in Brazil CONAR has proposed mandatory accreditation for influencers and affiliates.
How Often Do Gambling Advertising Laws Change?
Often enough to make a yearly review useless. Across the GEOs and platforms in this guide, we counted more than ten dated rule changes in 2026 alone, from the UK bonus cap in January to Google ending affiliate certification for Croatia in October. That’s why this table is updated quarterly.
Does an Offshore Licence Get Around Local Ad Rules?
No, and it’s getting harder to pretend otherwise. Since September 2025, the UK CAP Code covers social posts from UKGC licensees registered abroad. Germany bans advertising for unlicensed gambling outright, and Brazil’s CONAR now notifies platforms to pull ads from unauthorized operators.
Are Casino Bonuses Still Allowed in Europe?
Mostly, with limits. The UK caps wagering at 10x and bans mixed-product offers, Spain allows welcome bonuses again after the 2024 Supreme Court ruling, and Germany allows them within licence conditions. The Netherlands plans to ban bonuses entirely, and in Italy they can’t be promoted to the public.