A few local operators are under investigation by the Malta Gaming Authority for breaking social responsibility and taking advantage of customers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the vast majority of iGaming operators in Malta have complied with the MGAs legal directives to be socially responsible throughout this time of crisis, a few operators sought to take advantage of people’s downtime at home and encouraged people to spend money and gamble.

“It is not optional, it is an obligation on them as operators. We issued it so that none of our licensed operators took advantage of this crisis,” said MGA CEO Heathcliff Farrugia in today’s episode of Covid Calls.

“Anyone that uses anything related to COVID-19 to promote any new promotion or campaign, that for us was considered socially irresponsible.”

“The vast majority of our operators compiled but we have a couple of companies currently being assessed by our commercial communications committee and some fines will be issued as well.”

Some companies went as far as to have advertisements with messages that read ‘Stay Home, Stay Gambling’ which landed them in hot water with the MGA.

Other operators saw potential betting opportunities for the pandemic and created COVID-19 markets that customers could bet on.

“We had a couple of socially irresponsible operators who came up with bets on COVID-19. For example, they had markets on when countries will open schools, the number of deaths, the infected etc.”

“By far they do not represent the majority of the operators we had.”

You can watch the full episode on how COVID-19 affected the iGaming industry in Malta here below.