The Connection Between Sports, Gambling, and Politics in Bulgaria: A Deep Dive Into Recent Legislation and Media Ownership Changes

The connection between sports in general and between football and gambling in particular has always been of great importance for GERB and DPS and this is one of the reasons that both parties are always trying to prevent sports funding processes. This is how the professor of journalism at SU “Kliment Ohridski” Zhana Popova explained in the program “(O)position” the sudden interest and active participation of the parties Boyko Borisov and Delyan Peevski in the amendments to the Law on Gambling. accepted on Tuesday. They completely banned gambling ads on television, radio, newspapers and the Internet.

“It is important to remember that on the day the National Assembly adopted the changes, CSKA football club changed its owner. state lottery, go to financial fun. bookmaker and television,” Popova recalled.

The owner of Nova TV is currently selling its media in Greece, and it is possible that Nova TV is also being sold, she says. Zhana Popova recalled that the Serbian group that controls Nova TV has a football team and wanted to buy the Bulgarian Levski, while the Czech group that owns BTV has other businesses besides the media. “The question is whether the new Domuschievi brothers are being sought now for Nova TV. I wouldn’t be surprised if brothers are leading it again, and if those brothers are directly connected to gambling. I think this is very possible,” admitted the journalism teacher.

She also mentioned other cases where it is believed that people interested in gambling have interfered with the work of the media. “Let’s review the interventions in journalism. Because of two brothers connected to gambling, Venelin Petkov is not the head of BTV news. He was replaced by Anton Hekimyan, who later became a city councilor from GERB. These are all political connections. Journalists at both Nova TV and BTV have repeatedly spoken about this kind of pressure on sports-related news, a real form of advertising of the helmets of the people who ‘ construction of the CSKA stadium”, lists Popova.

For what the journalism teacher expects about how gambling companies will start looking for ways to get around advertising restrictions – see more in the video.

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