The National Lottery is launching a new advertising campaign entitled ‘We set limits so that you don’t exceed yours’, focusing on responsible gambling and respect for individual limits.
The Belgian National Lottery has just launched a brand new advertising campaign: We set limits so that you don’t exceed yours. The aim of this advertising campaign is to communicate gambling more responsibly and to emphasise the importance of controlled gambling to the general public. This approach is in line with the National Lottery’s Code of Ethical and Responsible Advertising, which stipulates in particular that advertising must not create or maintain a gambling addiction or encourage abusive gambling.
The central message of the campaign
The very slogan of the operation states that setting limits is the responsibility of each player, but also of the organisation offering the games.
The National Lottery reminds us that it is putting safeguards in place to ensure that gambling remains a pleasure.
For its online games, the operator imposes default limits: €200 weekly deposits, €100 daily losses and a maximum of 35 instant games per day. These amounts can of course be increased, but only to a limited extent. Players can deposit a maximum of €500 per week and lose a maximum of €300 per day.
These maximum amounts are lower than in online casinos. As a reminder, in an online casino players can remove their deposit limit under certain conditions and there is no loss limit.
A balance between promotion and protection
The stakes in this campaign are twofold. On the one hand, the National Lottery must continue to promote its games in order to generate revenue (and, in turn, fund social projects); on the other, showing that it is committed to responsible gambling is a pillar of its strategy. It helps to strengthen the confidence of players and the general public.
This positioning is all the more delicate given that several political parties in Belgium are calling for even tougher legislation, or even a complete ban on lottery advertising.
What impact will this have on players?
Limits on National Lottery online games have been in place for a long time, so there’s no big change for players. And while it draws attention to healthy limits, it also reminds players that they are able to change those limits to ones more suited to their playing style, and therefore increase it if they wish.
Some players in the industry are openly critical of this new National Lottery campaign. They see it simply as a form of greenwashing, since the lottery benefits from a more flexible regime than private operators. This allows them to advertise actively and with slogans that encourage people to play, such as ‘become scandalously rich with Euromillions’. This goes against the idea of responsible gambling and can encourage excessive gambling in the hope of becoming rich.